Just saw a clueless conservative political cartoon blaming Obama for the twenty trillion dollar national debt.

I wonder what the four trillion dollar debt Reagan left us with is in 2017 dollars, ten trillion or so? Then there's the two wars that Bush and Cheney didn't pay for and Desert Storm which also goes on the conservative tab, although Poppy did try to pay for that only to be voted out of office.

A bigger problem would be to not raise the cap on the national debt as our credit rating would go down, and Wall Street would probably crash. Trump is also promising a build up in the military (which is where Reagan's debt came from in the first place) and a trillion dollars invested in fixing our infrastructure. That would actually be a good idea, a kind of stimulus package. Remember that? The Republicans did everything they could to make sure it didn't work. That stimulus package ended the recession. The Europeans didn't do it, and they've had two more recessioons since. I doubt the Republican congress would go for an infrastructure fix. They'll probably wait until the Russians turn out our lights. Think I'm kidding? How about climate change? They've picked the oil barons over scientists who are pretty sure climate change is caused by human activity. They don't care. Just show me the money!

Then there's the progressive income tax. It needs to be high on the top end for a reason. They've got most of the money. The Republican party, Grover Norquist especially, keeps trying to lower it, decreasing revenue for the federal government and adding to the national debt. And all those loopholes don't help either. General Electric should never pay no taxes on eleven billion in income. Governor Mark Dayton ran on and created a top income bracket in Minnesota. We've had a surplus for six straight years, 1.4 billion this year. Of course, the Republicans want to give it back, and they run both houses of the legislature. We could be fixing the infrastructure, building light rail and creating pre-school for everyone, but the regressive party only knows, "No new taxes!" For some reason voters think that applies to them. In nearby Wisconsin, Scott Walker's tax cuts came in with a whopping two billion dollar deficit. What to do, what to do? Let's cut three hundred million from higher education. A college dropout would do that.

You can also do some things with numbers, which is where that 19.9 trillion number comes from. I've seen a different estimate: 13.4 trillion, because we owe the rest to ourselves. We owe much less to China than voters think we do. The number is around 1.1 trillion. We actually owe Japan slightly more than we owe China. Both of them should be paying us. After WWII we helped rebuild Japan (and Europe). American corporations also helped build China's new capitalistic economy. I still think some of them are getting a kickback. We gave them our steel industry. We gave them our textile industry, all to nail the unions. We also helped Europe recover much sooner than they would have without the Marshall Plan. The only country who ever paid us back was Finland. If we'd borrowed money from them, you bet your sweet bippy they'd want it back. We also keep the United Nations running, paying much of the bill, and Trump is partially right about NATO countries not paying their fair share.

Also if you look at the percentage of our GNP the national debt takes up, it's something like 70%; that is, it was before that 19.9 trillion number popped up out of nowhere. I've never seen a source. Japan's debt, compared to its GNP is over 200%. Other countries and individual foreign investors still want the dollar and American T-bills. Why? Because we pay our debts, and we have the highest credit rating. Use not raising the cap on the national debt (as the Republican political hacks did during Obama's terms) at your risk, Mr. Trump.