Cutting The National Debt
"It's time to clean up this mess." Famous last words heard from the
mouths of many different politicians when talking about the national debt and
the budget deficit. Our debt is currently $4.41 trillion and we have a budget
deficit of around $300 billion and growing. Our government now estimates that
by the year 2002 the debt will be $6.507 Trillion. While our politicians talk of
balancing the budget , not one of them has proposed a feasible plan to start
paying down the debt.
In the early days of our government debt was considered to be a last
resort. In 1790, when Alexander Hamilton, as secretary of the Treasury, made
his first report on the national debt of the United States, he ...
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climbed to $25.5 Billion. In each of the following years the debt was
reduced, and by 1930 stood at $18.1 Billion. With the collapse of Wall Street in
1929, the country
(debt history: 1850 to 1950) fell into the Great Depression, which lasted
until 1940. At that time the debt had climbed to $51 Billion. By the end of
World War II the debt was $269 Billion.
Again the government worked to reduce the debt, and by 1949 it was
$252.7 Billion. At that point the Korean War started, sending the debt to $274
Billion by 1955. Since then, there has been no serious effort to pay down the
debt. The main point to be made was that on three separate occasions a major
debt reduction effort had been made, but in the past 55 years in spite of much
arm-waving there have been no similar results.
The U.S. debt is divided into two major kinds of loans, marketable and
nonmarketable. The former provides about 52 percent of the total and is made up
of bills, notes, and bonds that can be traded; the ...
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as Social Security, education, and training would be immune from such cuts.
He did warn though, “Make no mistake-- in other areas, there will be big cuts,
and they will hurt. This was June of 1995, and at the end of Fiscal Year 1996,
the national debt growth was $80 billion higher than previous projections, with
a final debt increase of $331 billion.
Where does this money go? This happens to be the most popular question
asked, yet the one nobody has a definite answer to. Out of all of the places
the government spends money, more than 50% goes to three main areas: defense,
Social Security, and Medicare and Medicaid, all of which combined account for
between $750 and $900 billion per ...
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Cutting The National Debt. (2006, August 17). Retrieved April 24, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Cutting-The-National-Debt/50907
"Cutting The National Debt." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 17 Aug. 2006. Web. 24 Apr. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Cutting-The-National-Debt/50907>
"Cutting The National Debt." Essayworld.com. August 17, 2006. Accessed April 24, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Cutting-The-National-Debt/50907.
"Cutting The National Debt." Essayworld.com. August 17, 2006. Accessed April 24, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Cutting-The-National-Debt/50907.
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