Let’s not forget that it is the prime objective of our arch enemy, Usama bin Laden, to bankrupt America . That was news you were not given in interpretations of his video speech to the American people that came out just before elections.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004 , by a vote of 52 to 44 the U.S. Senate passed S-2986 a bill to raise the national debt limit to $8.18 trillion, an $800 billion increase.

On Thursday, November 18, 2004 , by a vote of 208 to 204 the House of Representatives passed HR-856 to raise the debt limit as presented by the Senate.

On Friday, November 19, 2004 , President Bush signed the new debt limit into law.

This is the 84th time that the government has increased its meaningless statutory debt limit since 1940 when it began. It’s also interesting that President Bush signed this into law on the same day that Alan Greenspan was in Germany telling the G20 group of rich and emerging market nations that “the U.S. trade deficit cannot continue to grow forever.” Our trade gap now stands at a negative $664 billion, just short of the mark of the beast.

Also interesting were the comments made by a few members of the House during their one hour of allotted time to debate the debt ceiling issue. You can read the entire transcript from the Congressional Record that I downloaded in two parts by clicking first here and then here. The most salient parts are as follows:

Thomas M. Reynolds (R-NY) a member of the House Committee on Rules claimed that; “Without passage of the underlying bill today, vital programs such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance benefits, veterans care and military retirement are all put in jeopardy.”

How about that? After stealing $71 billion from our supplemental retirement insurance program that produced a surplus every month of fiscal 2004, this congressman has the balls to imply that Social Security benefits might be “in jeopardy” if the government can’t borrow more money. Lies don’t get much bigger than that, unless you’re talking about “weapons of mass destruction” as Bush did every day for at least five months before the invasion of Iraq .

To top it off, every other program Reynolds mentioned has also been robbed by the Beltway Bandits and some are currently in the position of having to draw down on their phony trust funds just as predicted by the confessions of people like President Clinton and other authorities on the subject. (See: Social Security, is the battle renewed?)

Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-NY) another member of the House Committee on Rules, made a speech for the opposition and she did so by starting out with what she called “the Birth Tax of $25,255” for every child born from this point forward. The same old story that’s used by many, including some well meaning good hearts, to try and soften the impact of what our national debt really means by claiming it applies to every man, woman, and child in the United States. It simply isn’t true.

What has always made U.S. Treasury securities attractive to investors and “the safest investment in the world” is the fact that they are backed by every taxpayer in the country, but everybody in the country isn’t a taxpayer.

Currently, we should have about 146 million working taxpayers, but we have only 138 million and not all of these pay income taxes. Every worker pays payroll taxes, but that’s Social Security and Medicare money. Only income taxes, both corporate and individual, can be used to pay off the national debt.

If you take out the youngsters who have not yet entered the job market, and you also take out the older retired generations that haven’t the income to cover the debt plus people who are not making enough to pay individual income taxes, you are left with a bill that amounts to more than $50,000 for every taxpayer in the country. That’s the real amount people owe if it’s spread equally amongst taxpayers.

Why do you think George W. Bush is willing to even consider a national sales tax or any other alternate system to generate more taxes from everybody?

Denial is not a river in Egypt . Until we start dealing with the truth, we are heading for exactly the sort of economic disaster bin Laden is hoping for. And it’s not that far off.