Jackson Free Press

Congress has until Aug. 2 to raise the debt ceiling, the cap on the amount of money the Treasury can borrow to pay the government's bills. As the clock keeps ticking, you may still have unanswered questions. How dire could the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling be? What are the possible solutions? Here's a reading list to help you keep up.

Following the debt ceiling debate in real time:

Slate has an updating infographic that lets you see how much money the Treasury has in its bank account right now . For the latest news and analysis, the Wall Street Journal has a frequently updated live blog. The Economist is also doing daily debt ceiling updates. Some good people to follow for updates on Twitter include CNBC's @JimPethokoukis, TIME Magazine's @MarkHalperin, CBS's @NorahODonnell, NBC's @LukeRussert and @KellyO, Slate's @daveweigel , Talking Points Memo's @brianbeutler and the Bipartisan Policy Center (@BPC_Bipartisan). Today we're curating tweets with debt ceiling news and analysis on our homepage—check out the module in the top right. For breaking updates, Topsy can be a useful tool for finding the latest articles and tweets on the debt ceiling.

The basics on the debt ceiling (including where it comes from):

An earlier guide of ours answers basic questions about the debt ceiling, like "What is the debt ceiling, really?" and "Is the debt ceiling necessary?" The New York Times also has a useful FAQ that gets into some of the finer points of the history of the debt ceiling system. Poynter has a guide to common misconceptions about the debt ceiling that can help you cut through misleading coverage. It's important to note, as Poynter does, that raising the debt ceiling doesn't mean that we're increasing spending, but that we're letting the Treasury borrow money to pay for things we've already agreed to spend on. Here's how NPR Correspondent Robert Smith explained the situation to Poynter:

"The way I put it is that Congress has already ordered the pizza. They approved the pepperoni. They called up and had someone deliver it," Smith said via email. "Now the pizza guy is knocking at the door, and asking to get paid. If you don't raise the debt ceiling, it's like saying we didn't want that pizza in the first place. Maybe he'll go away if we don't answer."

The New York Times has a helpful chart that breaks down which policies have contributed to the national debt over the Bush and Obama administrations. This chart, tweeted James Fallows at the Atlantic, "should accompany every story about the debt ceiling debate." The White House released a more detailed chart breaking down the sources of the national debt on Tuesday. Talking Points Memo explains that most of the U.S. national debt is actually owed to the United States—it's money that some government agencies have borrowed from each other. The Guardian's data blog has a rundown of which foreign countries the United States owes, and how much we owe them . If you want to go in-depth into the topic, there's a compilation of academic research on the debt ceiling up at Ezra Klein's Washington Post blog.

Read the rest of this Pro Publica report here.

Previous Commentsshow

This is extremely useful to interested readers because it gives a source of detailed information that we do not get except in misleading sound bites from the talking heads (too often the shouting heads) of Fox and MSNBC. The real problem is not the debt ceiling debate or even the public debt as we use the phrase (the on balance sheet debt or admitted debt), but the off balance sheet or hidden debt--the largest of which are the unfunded social security and Medicare obligations. Those "social contracts", if we honor them as written, are five to ten times the admitted debt. US companies and state and local governments record those “debt equivalent commitments” on their balance sheet; the Federal government does not. If it did, the debt would be $50 to $100 trillion, not $14 trillion. Thus, the real show (the debt ceiling debate) does not even qualify as the opening act or even opening scene) is how we resolve that long term imbalance. I don’t have a list such as Pro Publica compiled of data and analysis on the long term fiscal imbalance although the Peter G Peterson Foundation http://www.pgpf.org/ work is the best single unbiased source of which I am aware and the primary raw sources are the government sites such as the annual Trustees reports for Medicare and social security http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html. I used to track such matters but about five years when the debt (admitted and hidden) exceeded the entire net worth of the country and no one seemed to care, I stopped and started thinking more about how to adapt personally to the inevitable day of reckoning. I am convinced we are about to engage in a public discussion (and one that is not a very civil discourse even now) every bit as important about the nature of our country as the Civil War was. The debt ceiling discussions are to that debate what Fort Sumter was to the Civil War. Those who followed the change of control at Fort Sumter did not foresee the Civil War. I am not forecasting and do not expect a war or violence, but I am suggesting that we are about to have an intense public debate about the nature of this country. The long term fiscal imbalance is every bit as significant to who we are as a country as the underlying issues that caused the Civil War were. The JFP would do its readers a great service if it found or created a list of the reading materials on that long term imbalance. Perhaps Pro Publica has that as well? The list would be particularly valuable, if in addition to the primary data sources, it contained responsible analysis from both sides of the debate. Richrd A. Sun CFA

RichardASun

Aug 2 2011

The JFP would do its readers a great service if it found or created a list of the reading materials on that long term imbalance. Perhaps Pro Publica has that as well? The list would be particularly valuable, if in addition to the primary data sources, it contained responsible analysis from both sides of the debate. Alert the media: we're thinking alike, Sun! It might take us a minute due to the primaries, some big cover stories, BOOM deadlines and some staff changeovers here, but we're planning to put something together to help folks wade through and know what is really at stake.

DonnaLadd

Aug 2 2011