aarondavid826, saying “cut the war machine and tax the rich” is as wise of a statement as saying “give women the right to vote”! Are you from the distant past or future? They ALREADY “tax the rich”! In fact, the top 5% pay MORE THAN HALF of all federal taxes collected. About 43% of Americans (the non-“rich”) pay ZERO federal taxes. So, lucky you, your wish has already been granted, surprise! Now, please tell us how your grand solution has solved everything, because your tax plan has been in place for A LONG TIME & Obama has ALREADY reduced our military to pre-WWII levels, yet our national debt is climbing faster than ever before! Economists have determined that if you taxed those “evil 1%ers” at a rate of 100% of their income, it would not cover Obama’s spending. So unless you gave the extremely wealthy a MASSIVE pay raise, “taxing the rich” at ANY percentage, even 100%, will not pay for the extreme spending of Obama. The only thing you could say that would exhibit any grasp of current reality is to say “tax everybody, not just the rich”. As far as “cut the war machine”, which we’ve already done, keep in mind that China’s military has started rapidly expanding, they’ve changed their military’s stance from a primarily defensive one to an offensive one & they’ve recently been showing aggression towards our planes in international airspace, Russia has started testing new nuclear missiles, breaking long-standing treaties, they’ve been intentionally provoking us & testing our limits lately & Iran is very close to having nuclear weapons, which most of the world agrees would be an extremely dangerous development. But, I guess we won’t have to worry about our national debt or extremely high taxes if we’re all dead, so your military-shrinking solution might actually be brilliant!

You could tax the top 1% at 100% and it wouldn’t make a difference. Wel, actually, it would…..Businesses would flee overseas, and who could blake them?
Some clown just tried to post: “funny how fox never criticized bush for raising the debt more than obama” Well, they also never criticized him for cheating on Hillary or for Watergate. Why? Because those are also things that he never did! Hey, Brainiac, A. Bush added $4.9trillion to the debt in his full 8 years. Obama has added about $7trillion in just his first 4 1/2 years! You may have dropped out of school before getting a firm grasp on math, so I’ll assist you on this one: 4.9 is NOT “more than” 7!  B. If you’re foolishly trying to imply that Fox never criticized Bush, it just shows you never watched Fox. He’s clearly getting his “news” from liberal cocktail parties or just making up his own set of “facts” while smoking or injecting something questionable.. If you’re going to post something, exhibit at least an ounce of intelligence.

If I can balance my money, I’m pretty sure these idiot politicians can.

Federal reserve loans money to everyone including the government federal reserve is a private organization

hey, last time I check up the info… The debt is at 18.1 Trillions lol…!!!! It just keeps growing!

We should cut all welfare, we should cut all spending on drug wars, we should cut all spending on any military that doesn’t have to do with protecting America and I don’t mean retarded preventive nonsense. All wars should be suspended, and the only war that is allowed is on American Soil, protecting from a invader. We should cap all money any public servant gets to what ever the nation average is.  So even the president only gets around 50k. End of story.

18 trillion and growing.

come on Stossel don’t get into economics, your over generalization will not give you edge in this topic, ask the subprime mortgage fiasco makers they should know better how to push government into debt

Elect Dr. Ben Carson

I got it, we just stop paying taxes all at once, for 1 year. Lets see them lock us all in jail. Ahhhh, never mind, go watch your foot ball game, and be mad at your neighbor for liking the other team.

If the country is 17Trillion in debt and most of the population is in debt….then where did all that money go?  If they just gave everyone that 17T then every American would receive 51 million dollars each.   Somebody got that money.

…it recently passed $18 trillion

O yeah, pay my food bill, internet bill, phone bill, heat bill, car, btw I am gonna go have 15 more kids, so I can get 40 grand back on my taxes, when I make 100 bucks a year haha.

Bernie Madoff is in Jail for his Ponzi scheme.  He is a piker compared to the Federal Government!  The Social Security Trust fund was raided in 1964 and that money was replaced with Federal Treasury notes that are now part of the National Debt!  Face the problem!  If the Trust fund were left alone back 1964 The politicians wouldn’t have been able to conduct the Viet Nam war, (Heaven Forbid!)  Nobody would miss that pile of money growing within the Federal debt!   Social Security is not a retirement program as it exists today!  Nobody can live on Social Security, it was to be an assist to the public so they wouldn’t starve to death when they could no longer work.  if you don’t plan to for retirement which will happen to every American eventually, then you will have to live on Social Security which will barely cover food and lodging.  Why?  should those who plan for the future now pay to support those who didn’t bother.  They made the bad decision, and spent their retirement, that was their decision.  Why? Should the responsible American people have to pay for that lousy decision?

kill all benefits except veterans.

There are no benefits for veterans.

Anyone else taken aback when Ramesh started to speak? Very unique voice

+B Sharps I was very surprised.

Notice that graph at the start? 1914 was the year the federal reserve act was passed to an unsuspecting public. Read article one, section eight of the constitution and you will find that congress has the right to coin money and establish the value thereof. Before 1914 congress printed our currency as needed at zero interest. Since then we borrow from the “privately owned” federal reserve at interest. Congress had no legal right to absolve itself of this function or confer it to any other. Such an illegally created debt does not exist. There, Problem solved.

You socialist in this country are economically RETARDED.

Pelosi is batshit crazy..