Housing-rescue bill with interesting addition...
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25812594/

The terms of the housing-rescue stuff sound good, but I found it pretty interesting that they added this little bit to it:

"And it increases the statutory limit on the national debt by $800 billion, to $10.6 trillion."

and...

"It also counts any federal infusion for the mortgage giants under the debt limit, essentially capping how much the government could spend to stabilize the companies without further approval from Congress. As of Tuesday, the national debt that counts toward the limit stood at about $9.5 trillion, roughly $360 billion below the statutory ceiling."

I wonder what else gets to count under that "national debt increase"? Hmm... no wonder the White House dropped its objection.

My American Girl collection.

Way over my head Morrigoon.............explain this as if I were a child:blush:

Jeff: well, I'm not sure the numbers I quoted add up, but the point is that they're raising the statutory limit on the Federal Debt - allowing the government to go further into hock by billions of dollars.

Now, maybe that is the amount that would be needed to get the economy under control, but part of me wonders if Georgie agreed to the bill finally because he might have his eye on other uses for that additional government debt (eg: spending the money not JUST on bailing out the market)

I'm not objecting per se, it may be necessary for the program to achieve its stated purpose, but it does make me wonder.

Everyone squeals about the debt. but everyone has their pet government spending that they don't want cut.

Me? I'd be happy if the federal government went back to just the constitutionally mandated functions. That would save a lot of money.

I had no idea there was some sort of limit on how in debt we can be. Me, I think it's dumb that we even can go into debt...but financial stuff is not my strong suit :)

Semi-annual increases in the debt cap are pretty standard (that's how it got up to the $9.8 trillion in the first place) so I don't think this was a particularly significant part of it.

If anything it would probably have been considered a hindrance for not increasing it enough to account for possible bailout measures the administration might be considering.

Hear hear!

I figure I can't expect the nation to be out of debt until I'm there myself - sure would be nice to have a trillion dollar visa card though

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