* JDG ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Republicans pretty well kept that from happening.) Now, paying down > the national debt would only really have benefited Social Security to > the extent that the overall ratio of US debt to GDP might become so > overly burdensome in the near future as to prevent the government from > borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in Social Security. After all, > nothing done in the current year can affect nominal budget *deficits* > in future years.
Wrong. Amazing you can get this so wrong, being a government employee and claiming to be an economist. You have heard of interest? Fiscal 2004 the interest on the debt outstanding was more than $321 billion. (58% of the national debt is held by the public, so a rough guess would be that 58% of that interest is paid to non-government creditors). That is billions of dollars that would otherwise be available to spend on things like social security, or to, I don't know, REDUCE THE BUDGET DEFICIT IN FUTURE YEARS! http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
