The Senate left an extra present under your tree ...

... and it really didn't attract much notice with all the fanfare surrounding the vote on Cannibal Care, which passed and is now on its way to conference to tussle out the differences between the House and Senate versions.

Your second gift? The Senate voted to raise the "debt ceiling," i.e. to give itself the authority to borrow another $290 billion and forward the repayment demands to you. That's on top of the $12.x trillion in previously existing debt they're already trying to stick you with. Here's a letter I sent to "my" congresscritters after the House passed the measure last week (it's also available, with surrounding commentary, in my C4SS column for December 19th):

Dear Senator McCaskill,

I notice that the US House yesterday approved a $290 billion increase in the government’s "debt ceiling,” raising it from $12.1 trillion to $12.4 trillion.

Presumably the Senate will take up similar legislation in the near future.

I am not writing to yourself, Senator Bond and Representative Clay in order to urge any particular vote or action on the matter, but rather just to inform you that I’m not responsible for, nor do I intend to pay off, your debts.

I’ll be publishing this letter in one or more public spaces so that your creditors will be aware of this fact. If they’re going to loan money to the three of you and your 532 colleagues in the House and Senate, they may want to run credit checks first. Just so long as we’re crystal clear on the fact that I won’t be co-signing for you, the rest is between you and them.

Best regards,
Thomas L. Knapp

Action Item: The borrowing stops now!

Facebook group ... check!

Sample letter (as transmitted to US Representative Lacy Clay and US Senators Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill via their web contact forms -- go thou and do likewise!):

Dear (Congressman Clay, Senator Bond, Senator McCaskill),

Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to "top lawmakers" on Capitol Hill, requesting that Congress raise the federal government's "debt ceiling." Federal deficit spending is on track to bust that current "ceiling" of $12.1 trillion in October.

Congress's reply to Mr. Geithner's request should be an unequivocal "no."

Over the years I've heard a lot of guff out of Washington about "balancing the budget" and "reining in spending." The way you all carry on about it, you'd think it's rocket science or something.

It isn't. I can explain how to "balance the budget" and "rein in spending" to you in one sentence: Stop spending more money than you're taking in.

At this point, the ability of the federal government to continue taking its debt service out of my hide -- or my children's or grandchildren's hides -- is very much in question and will eventually be exposed as fantasy. Yet that is precisely the basis upon which you approach your would-be creditors, although you attempt to avoid the unpleasantness of the boast with euphemism ("the full faith and credit of the United States").

At some point in the not too distant future, you will face a choice: To repudiate the "national debt," or to pay it off yourselves. I'm not going to pay it off for you. Neither are my children or grandchildren. You took out the loans. They're your problem.

In preparation for that coming day of reckoning, the best piece of advice I can give you is the advice I'd give to a man in a hole who wants to get out: Stop digging. Tell Mr. Geithner that $12.1 trillion in debt is more than enough and that the borrowing stops now.

Best regards,
Thomas L. Knapp

A modest proposal

The Boston Tea Party rewrites its program every two years, and will do so this October in convention. I'm proposing the following program point (rough draft -- it may change slightly) for adoption at that convention:

The Boston Tea Party supports a constitutional amendment a) repealing section 4 of the 14th amendment; b) prohibiting future indebtedness and deficit spending on the part of the federal government; and c) repudiating all federal government debt and debt service obligations accrued prior to the ratification of said amendment.

I'm normally loath to let Murray N. Rothbard argue a point for me, but in this case he's actually a good place to start.

Critiques, please.