The Gary Null Blog

July 31, 2011

By Ellen Brown

The debt ceiling crisis can be averted by enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates the government to pay its debts already incurred, including pensions.   That means Social Security, which IS an "entitlement," in the original sense of the word.   We're entitled to it because we've paid for it with taxes.      

The game of Russian roulette being played with the U.S. federal debt has been called a "grotesque political carnival" and political blackmail.   The uproar stems from a statute that is unique to the United States and never did make much sense.   First passed in 1917 and revised multiple times since, it imposes a dollar limit on the federal debt.   What doesn't make sense is that the same Congress that voted on the statute votes on the budget, which periodically exceeds the limit, requiring the statute to be revised.   The debt ceiling has been raised 74 times since 1962, 10 of them since 2001.   The most recent   increase, to $14.294 trillion by H.J.Res. 45, was signed into law on February 12, 2010.