This is garbage econ and anyone who has been in Congress as long as Sen. Grassley knows that.
Iowa households can’t play games with their own budgets. Congress shouldn’t play footsie with the full faith and credit of the United States.
I hate to directly accuse a sitting Senator of lying to his constituents, but the only other option is accuse him of gross ignorance of the funding process of the federal government, so I'll just leave it as a choice his readers can make.
There is no correlation between the federal government, the monopoly issuer of US dollars, and a household budget. Unless, of course, the household had a legal source of US dollars at no cost and with no limit except for the real resources and labor the spending is meant to deploy.
Why would the currency issuer need to borrow its own currency back to enable it's spending for the public purpose? It doesn't, and never did except to comply with regulations, such as the debt limit, put in place to prevent proper funding of our economy and to keep labor subservient to banks for private lending and the employers.
Since 2001, the federal government has spent more than it collects in revenue. That means the U.S. Treasury Department must borrow money to finance government operations.
A balanced budget means the government is clawing back all payments made to the private sector for the real resources and labor it uses, effectively stealing both. Worse yet, a "surplus" to the government must come from somewhere, and that is the savings of the people the debt represents. Stealing the resources the government issues payment for is one thing, but to steal prior payments from the people's savings is quite another, and yet Clinton is still praised for doing so.
That savings is represented by Treasury bonds, but is not a "revenue" source for spending since the US dollar is self funded and must be created before it can be borrowed or collected in taxation. It is far more accurate to state that federal spending "funds" Treasury bonds than the reverse as Grassley is stating here.
Both bond sale proceeds and tax collections are destroyed as part of the money supply by being applied to the debt. This originally defended our gold reserve, but now has no real purpose beyond removing excess dollar reserves from the banking system. Using such misdirection to promote a political agenda is unconscionable for any elected official, but we see it from both sides when it serves their political purpose.
Do the honorable thing Sen. Grassley. Tell the people the truth about how money is created and spent at the federal level. I once had a great respect for you and would like to see that respect restored in the time you have left in service to your constituency. Don't throw that away for your "party".
