Worlds Apart: Warren Buffet, Orrin Hatch

08 July 2011 |permalink | email article

Warren Buffett is one of the very few mega-rich Americans who have emerged as an adult in the absurd controversy over raising the debt limit. He told CNBC Thursday that “we raised the debt ceiling seven times during the Bush Administration but now the Republican-inspired Congress is “trying to use the incentive now that we’re going to blow your brains out, America, in terms of your debt worthiness over time.”

Failure to raise the borrowing limit of the federal government by August 2 when the U.S. will reach the limit of its borrowing abilities will likely trigger defaulting on its loans.

In May the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway told a shareholders meeting that if Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling, it would constitute “the most asinine act” in the nation’s history. Reuters reported.

Buffett appears unfazed by data that America’s total public debt equals close to $14.3 trillion which is, according to the CIA World Factbook, is roughly 60 percent of the annual gross domestic product,

“We had debt at 120 percent of the GDP, far higher than this, after World War II and no one went around threatening that we’re going to ruin the credit of the United States or something in order to get a better balance of debt to GDP.” Let’s hope John Boehner, if not Mitch McConnell, gets the message!

Quotable

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch is on the Democratic Senatorial Congressional Committee hot seat for saying that the poor need to share some responsibility for shrinking the debt.” On Thursday Hatch voted against a motion to begin debate on a measure that would have declared the rich should bear some pain of debt reduction, the Huffington Post reported.

130