Raising the debt ceiling means paying for things already purchased.
Annualized spending increases by president:
Reagan (R): 7%
Bush (R): 5%
Clinton (D): 4%
Bush (R): 8%
Obama (D): 2%
Trump (R): 16%
Biden (D): minus 9%
What did China pay for in advance
A bombshell Biden story — and the media dutifully ignore it (msn.com)
The problem is the President and Gov spending way more than they have
A US debt crisis will arrive sooner as banking turmoil hits the economy and federal revenue, strategist says (msn.com)
Politicians need stop breaking the STOCK ACT (embedded)
78 members of Congress have violated a law designed to prevent insider trading and stop conflicts-of-interest
Insider and several other news organizations have identified 78 members of Congress who've recently failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the
STOCK Act.
Congress passed the law a decade ago to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings. A key provision of the law mandates that lawmakers publicly — and quickly — disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child.
But many members of Congress have not fully complied with the law. They offer excuses including ignorance of the law, clerical errors, and mistakes by an accountant. Insider has chronicled this widespread nature of this phenomenon in "
Conflicted Congress," an ongoing reporting project initially published in December 2021.
While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the
penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount — or waived by House or Senate ethics officials. Ethics watchdogs and even some members of Congress have called for stricter penalties or
even a ban on federal lawmakers from trading individual stocks.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers
seriously debated such a ban, with a vote on a consensus bill
seemingly imminentduring early autumn. But Democrats, who enjoyed majorities in the House and Senate through January 2023,
did not press legislation forward, and a bill to ban lawmakers from trading stocks
ultimately died.
A Republican-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate would need to work together in 2023 and beyond to reignite a congressional stock-ban effort.
Here are the lawmakers discovered to have recently violated the STOCK Act — to one extent or another: