Time To Stop Wasting Everyone's Time, Bernie

[Wyrd of Gawd]

It's possible to reduce the deficit provided you cut non-mandatory spending.  In most cases that's not a good idea because you will end up hurting a lot of vulnerable people.

http://economicsonlinetutor.com/pics/Fed...20z002.png

The deficit exists because the Congress Critters won't raise taxes to cover all of their obligations.  So they borrow money to make up the difference and that's the deficit.  The more they borrow the greater the national debt becomes and because they are always borrowing money the national debt continues to grow and is never reduced.

Yeah, they'd rather raise the debt ceiling than do something to lower the debt.

Actually there's nothing wrong in having a large national debt.  It shows that the world has faith in your economy.  Plus it absorbs money that foreigners and institutions could use to improve their own national infrastructure instead of financing ours.  That results in lower taxes for us.  The problem that other countries have had with debt is that they didn't have the financial  systems in place to ensure that they could redeem the debt when it came due.  We don't have that problem at this time and if every thing stayed the same we could support an unlimited national debt.  But at some point we will hit a depression and default.  That might cause a few minor problems but as long as our nukes work we won't have to really get concerned over it.