Perry Says Default Fears Are Overblown
HOUSTON — Gov. Rick Perry said he isn’t worried that a failure to increase the nation’s borrowing authority would trigger the kind of economic catastrophe that federal officials, ratings agencies and many economists have warned would occur if the debt ceiling isn't raised.
“There’s still gonna be revenues flowing in, so I think this threat that somehow or another the world is going to come to an end and the threat of 'We’re not going to be able to pay our bills' is a bit of a stretch,” Perry told reporters in Houston. “Most Americans know ...
Comments (48)
Maité Landa via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Perry is an asswipe who either doesn't understand how the world economic system works or who just doesn't care. Did I mention he's an ass-wipe?
Carolyn Moon via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Can you spell PERRY IS AN IDIOT?
Matthew Whitt via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I don't like Perry either. However we don't have to raise the debt ceiling. We really don't have to raise taxes or even cut spending for now. There is still a 3rd option.
Darrel Mulloy via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Perry doing his best to sound like Ron Paul! I prefer the real thing. Ron Paul 2012.
Karen Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Figures. Kind of like when he said that Strayhorn didn't know what she was talking about? So, how much faith do you put in Perry? Not much.
Richard Stewart via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Seems like all Texas Politicians are Idiots !!!
Richard Stewart via Texas Tribune on Facebook
With the nation facing default early next week, the U.S. House is expected to take up Speaker John Boehner's budget bill Thursday. The Tribune contacted all 32 members of Texas congressional delegation to find out how they would vote.
John Cobarruvias via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Coming from a governor that created a $27 Billion deficit in his own state. He is the blind leading the crippled.
Ed Rankin via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The voice of infant wisdom
Lee B. Weaver via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say NOBODY actually believes Rick Perry knows what he's talking about here. Not even his supporters.
I don't think it's the basis of anyone's support for Rick Perry that he actually be competent. And I'm really, really not joking.
Jason Stradtner via Texas Tribune on Facebook
3rd option being what?
Jason Stradtner via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lee your right. I had a woman tell me today that she was gonna vote for perry because he wears boots and she loved her some boot wearing men.
Danny Wier via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Spoken like someone who's never had to worry about a damn thing in his whole life.
Colin Strother via Texas Tribune on Facebook
To his credit he also thinks Jesus rode a dinosaur.
Karen Hawkins via Texas Tribune on Facebook
OMG, can you imagine Rick Perry and Sarah Palin on a ticket together? It would be like the homecoming king and queen. barf.
Karen Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
That is a really, really stupid reason to vote for someone. No wonder we are in the mess we are in.
Maité Landa via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Karen, scarier ticket is Palin/Nugent 2012. I've seen that bumper sticker here in Texas. :-/
Kona Head via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I am speechless & for me that is unusual, he is such a moron that i have no responce except that my jaw dropped, oh to be a Texan in this administration is embarassing
Kona Head via Texas Tribune on Facebook
sorry misspelled response, my bad
Sanders Kaufman Jr. via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The lesson here is that Republicans are deadbeats; and that people foolish enough to lend to them are just throwing their money away.I hope that the banks used by these Republicans in their personal lives are paying close attention.
Jacqueline Lousier via Texas Tribune on Facebook
@ Karen: Dumb and Dumber goes to Washington DC.....
Matthew Whitt via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It is with both parties Sanders. Just look at the banking institutions and their ties with the DNC
Richard Salvucci via Texas Tribune on Facebook
He makes W sound like Churchill
Nicholas Taylor via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I'll have to give Perry some credit...at least his position on the 10th amendment is consistent.
Katie Andrews via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Oh, good. Rick Perry's speaking again.
Karen Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Position on 10th Amendment? ROTFL
David Huang via Texas Tribune on Facebook
"Ignorance is bliss" is going to be one of the legs of his campaign then?
Lin Abbey via Texas Tribune on Facebook
what an ass.
Erica Bozovich Hart via Texas Tribune on Facebook
yeah Mr Perry, no biggie, our economy will tank if for no other reasons than: uncertainty, skyrocketing interest rates, millions of people not getting paychecks (my family included since my husband is a gov't contractor at Lackland), our credit rating being downgraded.....but hey, you go on living in that 10K a mo rental mansion of yours and those of us paying for it will go live in cardboard boxes on the street
Tim Thomas via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Does Perry realize that if we skip social security payments or paying our service members, we don't actually save money? If I don't pay my credit card bill, I now owe more money, plus my creditors are pissed off at me. Same thing for the federal government. The budget will still be the same. We'll still owe people the same amount of money that we planned on spending. We haven't cut anything. We just have a bunch of pissed off grannies and grunts with guns.
George Altenbaugh via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If you actually look at the numbers, we take in, through taxes, more than enough to pay our debt obligations. If defaulting on the debt would be so catastrophic why would we do it? Keep in mind that the government doesn't borrow everything that they spend- they do collect taxes every month. About $250B a month in cash. That's enough to pay for about 70% of what we spend. You can call Perry all the childish names you like but he's correct in his analysis of the situation.
Karen Hawkins via Texas Tribune on Facebook
No George, we don't take in enough to pay our debt. That's why they call it a deficit. Economics 101.
George Altenbaugh via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Karen, if you review the monthly expenditures, you will see that we pay roughly $30B a month in interest on the debt except in the months of June and Dec when the coupons are due and it's closer to $100B. Defaulting on the debt means that you don't pay the interest that you owe your debtors. Having a deficit means you have to borrow more to pay for stuff. So we take in more than enough to pay for the debt. Obviously something, presumably less important, will go unpaid but there is plenty of money to pay the debt.
Annmarie Jensen via Texas Tribune on Facebook
This is nuts. Talk to the economists. Michelle Bachman and Perry can say whatever they want but this is insane.
Suzanne Hardie Lander via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Well if the world was going to come to an end it would be simpler. There wouldn't be anything to worry about afterwards :p
Sharon Richard via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It's so easy to be chipper when you're wealthy, and when someone else is paying your $10,000 rent.
Debra Haas via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Best line in the article "“Rick Perry must be confusing himself with an economist"
Karen Hawkins via Texas Tribune on Facebook
George - okay , so then you said debt obligations, but strictly speaking, if you are only talking about the interest, I'd be interested in which other obligations such as the monthly social security, medicare, defense contractors, active military, unemployment insurance, etc. that make up the rest of the monthly spending "obligations", you suggest we don't pay?
Karen Hawkins via Texas Tribune on Facebook
George, I believe, the 4th largest obligation just under interest, social security, & medicare is defense contractors. My guess is that they are the first to get stiffed, cause grandma is getting her check and her blood pressure medicine. If we don't pay the contractors, think of the jobs lost. Right now they owe my small company almost $2M for goods and services already provided. That is a debt obligation. They got the stuff, they owe the money, all due in mid August, with a host of other stuff they want us to keep shipping. Are we going to get stiffed on the goods they already owe us for and go out of business as well as our suppliers? If we cant ship, well, that means some of the bigger contractors don't get there stuff either. What kind of ripple effect would it have on the larger Contractors, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrup Grumman, etc, and all of their suppliers, also not paid. Economics 101.
Richard Salvucci via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Yeah. If the Treasury can spend the same dollar twice, Perry will get the Nobel in Economics. Otherwise, he can join Madoff in jail
Julie Clegg McKain via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The pundits who are saying a default isn't the end of world .... would they be the same pundits who told Paulson and Bernacke "go ahead & let Lehmann Bros fail" in Sept '08? No one thought to look at the cross-default provisions in all those CDOs and sovereign bond deals that almost caused a world wide depression when the markets froze and then tanked in Fall '08 - Spring '09. Who's to say what will happen if our credit rating drops? My 201k can't stand too much more of a "lost decade" - 2001 - now.
Lark Jarvis via Texas Tribune on Facebook
gosh. he'd know, I guess . . .:~o
Richard Salvucci via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Look. Perry is, surprise, wrong. Here is why http://dolanecon.blogspot.com/2010/06/budget-basics-2-debt-dynamics-primary.html
Frances Demps via Texas Tribune on Facebook
@ Karen Cummings. Exactly! This is the same man who a few years ago insisted that his stupid tax scheme would not lead to a huge budget shortfall, which of course led to a huge budget shortfall this biennium. Who the heck cares or believes anything this person says about monetary issues?
Ben Martinez via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Perry should have taken a few Economics classes instead of just Chicken Science. All those other classes were too difficult to understand using his pea brain and cheer leading.
Bea McGuire via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I think John C. said it all.....the man spent his state into the ground..he's a nimrod.
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
He's like the Forest Gump of economics, without the cheerful disposition and with a mean streak. We are potentially embarking on an experiment in economics that nobody predicts will turn out well. The best anyone predicts, even the Tea Party whack-jobs, is that it might not do too much damage. The economy is struggling. Businesses aren't hiring because there is no demand. Cutting government spending and reducing the amount of money in the economy will help how? Perry and the rest of the Tea Party morons are clueless. They consistently boil down a complex, advanced industrialized economy and how to get it functioning better to balancing your checkbook on the kitchen table. Why not let them start with something simpler, like running Goldman Sachs and have them run it the way they run their checkbook. Then, if they're successful in that, let them graduate to possibly running a state. Oh, wait, we did that. He ran up a $27 billion dollar deficit.
Karen Hawkins via Texas Tribune on Facebook
the first $29 billion—the estimated interest payments Treasury owes for the month of August--will go straight to bondholders. That would leave Uncle Sam with $143 billion in cash to cover another $278 billion in bills coming due in August. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/exclusive/uncle-sam-pay-no-debt-deal-182942805.html