GOOD LUCK PAYING UNCLE SAM’S DEBT
– By Tom Purcell –
The national debt broke the $32 trillion barrier this week.
It’s a number so huge it’s incomprehensible to the average citizen.
We knew $32 trillion was coming.
It just got here a lot faster than the money experts thought, thanks to the roughly $5 trillion that the feds spent to help people and businesses withstand the many blows inflicted by Covid-19 and lockdowns.
If you are a good citizen who’d like to gift a few bucks to the federal government to help pay down the national debt, you need to know the good news and the bad.
The first bit of good news is that there’s an obscure old government program designed to help you do just that.
In 1961 the Bureau of the Public Debt — part of the Treasury Department — began allowing donations that directly reduce the debt.
According to Title 31, Chapter 31 of the U.S. Code, any citizen is free to give a “gift” to Treasury, under the condition that the money will be used only to pay down the debt.
The second bit of good news, reports MSN, is that in 2022 a number of unknown individuals gifted $1 million to Uncle Sam.
The bad news is, though, is really bad — our debt is at $32 trillion. Broken out into $1 million dollar increments, that is 32 million-million dollars!
Forbes reports that the debt is so large that two of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, couldn’t put a dent in it.
Their net worth is $340 billion. If all their vast wealth was donated to debt reduction, our debt would go from 32,000 billion dollars to 31,660 billion dollars!
In other words, there really is no point in gifting money to a dead-end cause.
Still, lots of good-hearted Americans have been giving money to Washington for centuries.
According to a fascinating discussion on NPR, the earliest gift dates back to the Madison Administration in 1811, when a random citizen mailed in five dollars.
Though there was not yet any formal program to process such gifts, other citizens kept on sending money in.
In 1843, continues NPR, the government set up a gift fund as a general all-purpose account. People donated checks, bags of pennies and even bags of gold!
Matt Garber, of the Bureau of Fiscal Service, said that in one instance $63 in gold bullion was gifted.
In the 1950s, he continued, “patriotic Americans wanted to help the government pay back the money it had borrowed for war efforts.”
That’s why, in 1961, the government established a special account specifically for the purpose of reducing the national debt.
Though the Bureau keeps no official records on this program, a senior advisor shared some interesting anecdotes with me in 2010.
She said gift-givers generally mail in their checks with no notes attached. Others sign over their tax-refund checks and in 1992 someone gave $3.5 million from their estate.
The record for the largest gift came in 1994 from an anonymous donor — $12 million.
As the debt continues to balloon, fewer Americans are gifting money to pay it down.
But who can blame them?
If our debt remained fixed at $32 trillion and we applied the roughly $1 million donated every year to pay down the debt, we’d pay it off in exactly 32 million years!
–
Copyright 2023 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.
The political cartoon blaming Democrats for the national debt is highly misleading. And, Tom Purcell’s comments make light of real solutions to address our national debt. The most obvious includes requiring the wealthy elite to pay their fair share of taxes – those who have avoided paying reasonable taxes for decades.
Following WWII, the economy flourished. For most families, the American Dream could be attained by a single income earner, usually the husband. Despite a top tax rate of about 70%, the extremely wealthy did quite well. That changed beginning in the late 70s, particularly with “trickle down” economics advanced during the Reagan era.
As evidenced by Republican policies during the past 40 years and their recent demands for raising the debt ceiling, the underlying agenda of the Republican Party is to transfer as much wealth as possible to their paymasters, the corporate and wealthy elite, while blocking all attempts to require these multi-millionaires, billionaires and corporations to pay a fair share in taxes.
Republican policies have cost the US Treasury trillions in lost revenue, funds that would contribute significantly to reducing the national debt. Since our country’s founding, except for Lincoln, the national debt increased the most under the Trump and George W. Bush administrations, when Republicans raised the debt ceiling without concern.
Meanwhile, a 2020 RAND Corporation study found that manipulating wealth distribution systems over the past 40 years shifted a mind-boggling $50 trillion upward, unreachable by the bottom 90% of Americans. Consequently, the US has the greatest income and wealth disparities among developed nations.
While Republicans claim tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy, evidence proves “trickle down” economics have failed. In fact, the middle class has declined markedly in the last 40 years. Despite a recent uptick during the pandemic, workers wages have remained flat.
In stark contrast, President Biden’s 2024 budget would reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over ten years by raising taxes on annual incomes over $400,000, increasing corporate taxes from 21% to 28%, raising the rate on capital gains, closing tax loopholes and other measures. All are reasonable strategies that deserve our support.
Mr Kramer, my guess you are a diehard Democrat. Though your response herein is elegant, and no doubt reflects some truth, I would counter it also does not tell the whole story. If you think the Democratic party is not responsible as well for running up the National deficit especially over the last few years, then clearly your opinion is partisan propaganda – or simply one side of the story. In truth billionaires and corporate entities donate to both parties to get tax loopholes established. And let’s not forget the offshore corporate tax shell game… or the Panama papers… Let’s not forget prolonged wars and the power of the military industrial complex to facilitate debt expansion… and let’s not forget the missing trillions of dollars unaccounted for over decades – See Catherine Austin Fitts – former HUD secretary. Shall we go on ? As far as the National Debt is concerned. it is irrelevant because as written on every one dollar bill is,the phrase – IN GOD WE TRUST… (figure that out) and as scary as some say, it is inevitable the current global financial system will be restructured in the next 1-3 years. Conspiracies, fear, and trepidation regarding this financial paradigm abound across yourube channels galore, but there is no other way out but to transition to a digital dollar. Well, let me correct that, we can go back to a barter system. As far as BRIC is concerned, In the PRC we trust.. just doesn’t cut it. Peace out
Mr. Purcell, while your facts are all good, you could use a copy editor! Your example of Bezoa and Musk are profound but you use the descriptor “32 billion” where you mean “32 trillion.”
I quote:
“Their net worth is $340 billion. If all their vast wealth was donated to debt reduction, our debt would go from 32,000 billion dollars to 31,660 billion dollars!”
Dear Paul .. Bezo(a)… an androgynous Jeff Bezos? Lol… glass houses … or.. a left brain fixation that schools syntax over message. See Alfed Korzybski – “Science and Sanity”… or Marshall Mcluhan… “casual viewing – head buried in the sand…” (Genesis – lyrics Peter Gabriel – Lamb Lies Down on Broadway)… All in good fun. .. sincerely Karma police