Raising the Debt Ceiling?

First let me start off with a personal note from my own experience.

I have had no balance on my discover card for over 10 years. I recently ran into a bit of need, and paid the minimum balance a couple months in a row. Now, you have to realize, we use our Discover card for EVERYTHING, so we routinely put on between $1500 to $3000 a month. The average is around $2000. We do it for the cash back. I recently applied $150 to my credit card balance. They don't like us because we pay it off in full each month. So they are losing money on us. Well, they were. They changed their policy and they now have two different interest rates. It used to be, if you paid off your credit card in full, you didn't get charged interest. You only got charged if you carried a balance forward to the next month. Not anymore.

But I'm getting distracted. We paid the minimum a couple months and ran up a balance of about $1800. I still had it in my bank account, because I thought I was going to need it for something. Turns out I didn't need it, but more on that in a minute. While I had the balance, I got a letter from Discover. Due to my great ability to manage my account, they were going to raise my credit limit! All the times I was responsible, over the past 10 years, and didn't carry a balance forward to the next month, wasn't being responsible in their eyes. It was when I started making them money by carrying a debt was I considered responsible. Isn't that funny?

And to mention something even funnier, shortly after receiving that letter, I got a similiar one from my other bank, Navy Federal Credit Union. They were raising the limit on our VISA with them. I guess it was from Discover's decision, becuase we don't use that card very often.

So my question is: Did they want to encourage us to spend more? Did they want us to not pay the debt because now we COULD spend more? I guess I'll never know, because I paid off the card. I had acrued a bit more in interest than I had anticipated and it took me 2 or 3 months to pay it off, but now we're back to paying it off every month.

So, how is this similiar to the United States? The US owes money to China (basically our bank now). China buys our debt, so they're like a credit card company. They see us going into debt further and further. What does a credit card company do when you default on your credit card? I don't really know for sure, because it's never happened to me. I have, however, been forced to declare bankruptcy once (about 15 years ago). When you do that, they come and seize all but essential assets. Is China waiting in the wings to do just that? Let's encourage them to spend more, so they will never be able to pay it off, and then come seize their assets. What is America's assets? Our land. Perhaps the President is doing land grabs so that he can give land in trade for debt?

We, as Americans, have to be against the raising of the debt ceiling. We also have to push for the government to balance the budget and pay down some of that debt. It is never easy as a household to pay down your debt. It means giving up some things that you are used to having. It means not eating out as much, maybe cutting corners by shopping at the thrift store, not going to all the sporting events, maybe your kids don't get to do the extra-curricular events because the stuff you need to buy to do it is out of your budget. It means an overhaul of your budget to determine what you are currently spending money on. Maybe it means only going grocery shopping once a week instead of everytime you run out of something, in order to save gas. Maybe it means lowering your thermostat a couple degrees in the winter (or raising it in the summer) in order to pay less in heating/cooling bills. Has our nation done that? No. Every program is off limits.

It's like a household deciding that they need to cut back, so they don't buy caviar. Everything else is left alone. So what if they only have caviar once a year? And therefore, they never get better, they keep going further and further into debt.

That's what our country is doing. We have to stop the madness.

Lori Ann Smith