Chairman Of Joint Chiefs Of Staff Says National Debt Is Biggest Threat To National Security

Not China, not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, not terrorists...According to Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the "single biggest threat" to American national security is the US national debt, which is either $8.85 trillion (public debt), $13.4 trillion (total national debt), $20 trillion (total debt including GSE debt), or $124 trillion (total debt including unfunded obligations), depending on one's definition of the word "debt." And as Zero Hedge has long been warning, the imminent increase in interest rates (sooner or later), will eventually put the country in an untenable funding position. "Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the
national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in
Detroit." The Chairman (the real one, not his pale imitation over at Marriner Eccles) politely forgot to add that the successful rolling of nearly $600 billion in debt per month is likely an even greater threat to national security.

More from Mike Mullen, commenting on the upcoming annual interest payment forecast:

“That’s one year’s worth of defense budget,” he said, adding that the Pentagon needs to cut back on spending.

“We’re going to have to do that if it’s going to survive at all,” Mullen said, “and do it in a way that is predictable.”

He also called on the defense industry to hire veterans and become more robust in the future.

“I need the defense industry, in particular, to be robust,” he said. “My procurement budget is over $100 billion, [and] I need to be able to leverage that as much as possible with those [companies] who reach out [to veterans].”

And since debt is now the functional equivalent of a nuclear bomb, it behooves readers to know just who the biggest threats to US national security are:

We hope it is appreciated promptly enough, that the entity highlighted in red can just as easily become the biggest domestic threat to national security, should the interests it represents, both political and financial, not get their way.

h/t Robert

Comments

[MsCreant]

You love nailing folks on that one. Funny results each time I have seen you play with it. Went to your website the other day and lurked.

MOU

[Uncle Remus]

Hey. The latest incarnation of the site is not my best. Been spending a LOT of time on the road and haven't converted the crazy threads in my mind to posts on the site. Of course, I may also be a little preoccupied with other, ahem, pressing issues.

Thought of getting a digital voice recorder and running the babble through the speech converter/universal xlator, but research indicates I might be out a couple o hundred green stamps and a less than satisfactory result. Couple hundred green stamps is a fair bit of silver or lead.

Good to see your posts here - know you're still alive & kickin'.

[win]

The Federal Budget year Begins Oct 1. Hint - that is 30 days from now.

While congress has no budget, they have deemed as passed some $1.12 Trillion budget which means they have "penciled" some level of budget.

Congress will, no doubt, pass another "continuing resolution" to allow the government to continue to operate at last years levels at least until the November elections are over. However, at the current spend rate, the debt will be $13.5 Trillion on Oct 1 with a remaining $.8 Trillion to hit the statutory limit ($14.294 trillion).  Recent published estimates indicate the debt limit will be exceeded prior to Dec 31 which will require congressional authority to increase the statutory limit.

There is a power play at work -

Congress is delaying the budget to avoid the penalty in the elections.

Once the elections are over, the incumbents will work to pass a budget as quickly as possible so that programs can obligate the funding before the new congress can meet and revise the budget downward.

This so the Fed can increase the debt so that congress can authorize an increase in the statutory limit prior to Dec 31.

We can already tell the military has been given advance warning of cuts that are coming, as evidenced by the recent announcement of the closing of one of the commands.

In light of this, it seems this is an indication that the military will struggle to complete it's missions if funding does not come through. In that event, i would expect funding to be diverted from acquisition programs in the same way that money has been diverted from NASA