JUST THE FACTS FOLKS.
Subject: Debt News 1 - save this one
The following are 27 shocking facts about U.S. debt that should set America on fire with anger….
#1 During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars.
#2 When Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. national debt was less than 1 trillion dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt is over 15.2 trillion dollars.
#3 During 2011, U.S. debt surpassed 100 percent of GDP for the first time ever.
#4 According to Wikipedia, the monetary base “consists of coins, paper money (both as bank vault cash and as currency circulating in the public), and commercial banks’ reserves with the central bank.” Currently the U.S. monetary base is sitting somewhere around 2.7 trillion dollars. So if you went out and gathered all of that money up it would only make a small dent in our national debt. But afterwards there would be no currency for anyone to use.
#5 The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.
#6 The U.S. government has total assets of 2.7 trillion dollars and has total liabilities of 17.5 trillion dollars.
#7 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
#8 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will surpass 23 trillion dollars in 2015.
#9 According to the GAO, the U.S. government is facing 34 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
#10 Others estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government now total over 117 trillion dollars.
#11 According to the GAO, the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP is projected to reach 287 percent of GDP by 2086.
#12 Others are much less optimistic. A recently revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” projects that U.S. government debt will rise to about 400 percent of GDP by the year 2050.
#13 The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
#14 If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. taxpayers, each taxpayer would owe approximately $134,685.
#15 Mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
#16 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.
#17 During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.
#18 When you add up all spending by the federal government, state governments and local governments, it comes to 46.6% of GDP.
#19 Our nation is more addicted to government checks than ever before. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
#20 U.S. households are now actually receiving more money directly from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#21 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#22 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#23 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.
#24 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#25 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
#26 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
#27 The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.
Mrs. Perry addressed the 1st Monday Club of Anderson this afternoon.
Recently, the SC Republican Caucus website highlighted this article on its website. This claim is based on what SC collects from you, the taxpayer, not the actual rates. We have an enormous amount of special interest crony tax breaks for the select, so those paying taxes are getting walloped, hard. Why can’t we simply lower all the tax rates and let everyone pay equally? That would take away the power of the legislature to pick winners and losers, that’s why. I support the fair tax.
Below is an excellant article by the South Carolina Policy Council on our tax rates.
Legislative leaders are claiming that South Carolina “has the lowest state taxes in the nation.” If only it were true. Unfortunately the claim confuses tax collections and tax rates. It’s true that the state collects fewer dollars – but those who pay taxes, pay at higher rates.
- Tax collections are low largely because the state provides hundreds of special tax breaks to well-connected companies and industries. Consider: state government hands out more corporate income and sales tax breaks than it collects. So collections are low, but rates on those who actually pay taxes are not.
- The state also collects fewer dollars because we’re the 45th poorest state in the nation. In other words: State government collects fewer dollars because there are fewer dollars to collect.
- South Carolina’s sales tax rate of 6 percent is the 15th highest in the nation.
- South Carolina’s income tax is 7 percent on nearly all income earners. That’s higher than “high tax states” such as Massachusetts, where the income tax is a flat 5.3 percent. Overall, South Carolina ranks 38th highest in the nation.
- We have the highest manufacturing property tax in the nation. National average: 1.42 percent. South Carolina’s effective rate: 3.73 percent.
- South Carolina’s state and local debt per capita is 16th highest in the nation. That’s debt that has to be repaid, sooner or later, by taxpayers.
- The “lowest taxes in the nation” claim doesn’t include all fines and fees. Yet fines and fees (“Other Funds”) are the single-largest source of state-based revenue in the budget – bringing in almost $3 billion more than general tax revenue.
To read more about how South Carolina ranks compared with other states, visit our rankings page on the web.
Copyright © 2011 South Carolina Policy Council
This material should not be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any legislation.
“Not since FDR failed in his attempt to ‘pack’ the Supreme Court has a President launched such an open assault on the Constitution, and taken such a dangerous step towards eliminating our system of checks and balances.” - Rep. Jeff Duncan
1st Monday Club of Anderson Welcomes State Superintendent of Education, Dr. Mick Zais
Monday, January 9th, 2012
Let’s talk about education! Start your New Year off right by attending our 1st meeting of 2012 with special guest speaker Dr. Mick Zais. He will discuss the state of our public schools and the impact of federal money on the state budget process.
Dr. Mitchell M. “Mick” Zais took the oath of office as State Superintendent of Education on January 12, 2011. Dr. Zais grew up in a military family, attending ten public schools in twelve years. Before winning public election as the seventeenth State Superintendent of Education, he served as President of Newberry College for ten years. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he served thirty-one years on active duty in the United States Army, retiring as a Brigadier General.
Our meeting will be held at Master’s Wok, 2921 N Main St, Anderson, SC29621 . Buffet line opens at 11:45 and the business meeting begins promptly at 12:15. Cost of lunch is $10 for members and $15 for non-members. We expect to have a full house for this meeting so your RSVP is very important. Once we have every seat filled, we will stop taking reservations. If you see you cannot come after you RSVP, please notify us promptly. You may call 934-3588 or email .
Today, I recieved a report from the director of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation. This report contains information on need for reform. The goals of the agency are reduce fees and decrease onerous regulations. In other words, get Government out of your wallet and our of your decision making process. Y’all know I’ve always been in favor of the open market drivin by consumers to be the regulator when possible.
click rere to read it
The Intelligent River technology will be implemented by Dr. Gene Eidson of Clemson University. Recently, The Other Funds Committee approved a transfer of private fund for this projectThe Intelligent River®, a research program of Clemson University’s Institute of Applied Ecology, seeks to transform the science and business of managing natural resources. The Intelligent River® software and hardware architecture provides 24/7 access to data from sensor networks measuring a wide variety of environmental parameters. The program web site, http://www.intelligentriver.org”
The Intelligent River®, developed by an interdisciplinary team, has the goal of creating a highly efficient and cost-effective real-time remote data acquisition system to observe unprecedented amounts of data. The most ambitious project is to create the world’s first “automated river”. In 2011, the National Science Foundation awarded the team a Major Research Instrumentation Award to deploy the Intelligent River® instrumentalong the 312-mile Savannah River — from the headwaters in North Carolina to the port in Savannah. The instrument will collect water quality and quantity data and aggregate data from many sources into one functional database that will populate river operational models. At the center of the Intelligent River® technology is a novel patent-pending networking platform called a “MoteStack” which collects, stores, and transmits data at a scale that until now was cost-prohibitive. The data is critically needed to improve water resources management as demand increases for drinking water, hydroelectric power, recreation and industrial production. The grant announcement on the NSF website reads: “It is evident that the growing mismatch between water supply and demand impacts us all: USA watersheds are in peril! This project does something about it with support from EPA and USACE (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). Within the reach of environmental science, this work explores the connections among land use, energy production, climate effects and water resources applying information and computing systems.”
James D. Giattina, EPA Region 4 water protection division director, said, “The proposed watershed-scale monitoring instrument will directly enhance our efforts to monitor water quality and manage watershed factors that impact water quality in real time. This constitutes a critical innovation as our waters face increasing pressures from drought, development and emerging pollutants.” “The technologies being developed will enable us to more adaptively manage the river by optimizing water resource allocation while minimizing impacts on the environment,” said Col. Edward Kertis, former commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District. “We will be able to refine our releases based on changes in water quality, ecosystem functionality, habitat availability and human effects. The new generation of data-collection platforms could potentially be adopted by every Corps of Engineers water-management office across the country.”
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America ’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America ’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, “the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
~ Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006
