The petabytes of information that would compose the voluminous tomes of Things Ben Carson Doesn’t Know A Damn Thing About now includes an updated entry on the debt ceiling in this interview with Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal.
Ryssdal: All right, so let’s talk about debt then and the budget. As you know, Treasury Secretary Lew has come out in the last couple of days and said, “We’re gonna run out of money, we’re gonna run out of borrowing authority, on the fifth of November.” Should the Congress then and the president not raise the debt limit? Should we default on our debt?
Carson: Let me put it this way: if I were the president, I would not sign an increased budget. Absolutely would not do it. They would have to find a place to cut.
Ryssdal: To be clear, it’s increasing the debt limit, not the budget, but I want to make sure I understand you. You’d let the United States default rather than raise the debt limit.
Carson: No, I would provide the kind of leadership that says, “Get on the stick guys, and stop messing around, and cut where you need to cut, because we’re not raising any spending limits, period.”
Ryssdal: I’m gonna try one more time, sir. This is debt that’s already obligated. Would you not favor increasing the debt limit to pay the debts already incurred?
Carson: What I’m saying is what we have to do is restructure the way that we create debt. I mean if we continue along this, where does it stop? It never stops. You’re always gonna ask the same question every year. And we’re just gonna keep going down that pathway. That’s one of the things I think that the people are tired of.
Ryssdal: I’m really trying not to be circular here, Dr. Carson, but if you’re not gonna raise the debt limit and you’re not gonna give specifics on what you’re gonna cut, then how are we going to know what you are going to do as president of the United States?
Carson: OK, let me try to explain it in a different way. If, in fact, we have a number of different areas that are contributing to the increasing expenditures and the continued expenditures that are putting us further and further into the hole. You’re familiar I’m sure with the concept of the fiscal gap.
Ryssdal: Why don’t you explain that a little bit, though.
Carson: OK, well, the fiscal gap is all of the unfunded liabilities that the government owes. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, all the departmental programs, all the agency and sub-agency programs extending into the future, which is a lot of money, versus the amount of revenue that we expect to collect from taxes and other revenue sources. Now if we’re being fiscally responsible, those numbers should be fairly close together. If we’re not, a gap begins to occur. We bring that forward to modern day today’s dollars, and that’s the fiscal gap, which sits at over $200 trillion and is continuing to grow. Now the only reason that we can sustain that kind of debt is because of our artificial ability to print money, to create what we think is wealth, but it is not wealth, because it’s based upon our faith and credit. You know, we decoupled it from the domestic gold standard in 1933, and from the international gold standard in 1971, and since that time, it’s not based on anything. Why would we be continuing to do that?
Oh good, in addition to knowing jack squat about foreign policy, criminal justice issues, the workings of the US Constitution, and basic civics, ol Doc McNothins here has no idea how modern macroeconomics works either, because we owe a bajillion zillion trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities because America’s GDP is just going to go to zero tomorrow and how can we pay for Medicare in 2065 because argle bargle collapse of all fiat currency GOLD WEED END THE FED.
Meanwhile, Ben’s over here reading Louie Gohmert’s bookmarked posts on Zero Hedge and going “You know, we don’t really need to pay for budget debts we’ve incurred because I’ll just magically cut waste so we don’t need to ever raise the debt ceiling.”
That seems like it’ll work. Can’t wait until he overtakes Trump on which cartoon idiot is winning the beauty contest.