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Tuesday, March 7, 2006 |
Bloomberg: "The U.S. Treasury today took steps to avoid slamming into the government's legal borrowing limit.
Treasury Secretary John Snow authorized the government to use the $15 billion available in the exchange stabilization fund on March 3 and issued a 'debt issuance suspension period' to temporarily stop investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. The Treasury also redeemed some of the fund's current investments.
The moves were the second Treasury has taken in the last month to stay below the debt ceiling.
Congress needs to raise the debt limit before it goes on recess March 20, Treasury spokesman Tony Fratto said.
This is the fourth time the administration of President George W. Bush has asked lawmakers to raise the debt limit. Congress complied with the last request, in November 2004, only after the Treasury was forced to delay auctioning bills and notes and move money among government pension funds.
Since Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget has gone from four years of surpluses, the longest such run since before the Great Depression, to deficits brought on by a recession, tax cuts, the Sept. 11 attacks, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane damage."
Though the government promised that beneficiaries of the civil service retirement fund will be fully protected and will suffer no adverse consequences from the funding suspension, it is clear that Bush is a big spender of other people's money. Raising the debt limit will not conceal the fact that the US government is broke.
11:36:08 AM 
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Wonkette: The US is censoring a number of websites in Iraq. While right-wing extremist sites - like O'Reilly's and Limbaugh's - are OK, Air America and Al Franken are banned on the Marine web.
11:23:31 AM
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