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Next Stop, Recession: The Financial Meteor Storm Is Headed Our Way

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Business-cycle recessions are not just inevitable, they are necessary to flush bad debt and marginal investments/projects from the system.

The next recession–which I suggested yesterday has just begun–will be more than a business-cycle downturn; it will be a devastating meteor storm that destroys huge chunks of the economy while leaving other sectors virtually untouched.

The dynamic that’s about to play out is simple: wages for the bottom 95% have gone nowhere for 17 years, while costs have soared far above official inflation for everyone exposed to real-world costs.

We have filled the widening gap between stagnant household income and rising expenses with debt. This stop-gap works for a while, but eventually the cost of servicing debt consumes the entire budget, leaving little to nothing to save or invest.

Absent savings and incentives for productive investment, productivity falters once productivity falters, wealth is no longer being generated or distributed widely.

After eight long years of filling the widening gap with borrowed money, the jig is up: the returns on adding debt have diminished to zero, and the financialization games that were supposed to be temporary emergency measures are now permanent.

Like a field exposed to toxins for 8 long years, all this permanent monetary and fiscal stimulus has weakened the productive economy while causing the most destructive weeds to flourish.

When credit expansion stops, the effect is like a meteor storm: marginal borrowers and lenders crater, and every sector that depends on marginal borrowers and lenders for sales and profits also craters.

Those sectors that are heavily in debt and dependent on marginal borrowers for sales implode once sales slump. As these enterprises default, all the lenders who issued this commercial debt also blow up.

Every node of the economy that is heavily indebted and dependent on marginal borrowers for sales, profits and taxes will be struck by a financial meteor. Every sector that avoided debt and sales funded by debt will escape with only light damage.

Here’s total credit in the U.S.: up from $26 trillion 2000 to $66 trillion today.The $12 trillion increase since 2009 required trillions in monetary and fiscal stimulus and hundreds of billions of dollars in savings diverted to the banks via zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP).

While explode higher, wages for the bottom 95% stagnated. Only the top 5% of households experienced any real (inflation-adjusted) income expansion . . .

Many of those about to be vaporized did not grasp the fragility of the “prosperity” they assumed was both solid and permanent. The difference between earned income and sales derived from earned income and debt-based income and debt-based sales is about to become painfully clear: the coming financial meteor strike will vaporize debt-based activity and leave whatever isn’t dependent on debt relatively unscathed. (For more from the author of “Next Stop, Recession: The Financial Meteor Storm Is Headed Our Way” HERE)

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Americans’ Debt Level Notches a New Record High

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Americans’ debt level notched another record high in the second quarter, after having earlier in the year surpassed its pre-crisis peak, on the back of modest rises in mortgage, auto and credit card debt, where delinquencies jumped.

Total U.S. household debt was $12.84 trillion in the three months to June, up $552 billion from a year ago, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report published on Tuesday.

The proportion of overall debt that was delinquent, at 4.8 percent, was on par with the previous quarter. However a red flag was raised over the transitions of credit card balances into delinquency, which the New York Fed said “ticked up notably.”

Loosening lending standards have allowed borrowers with lower credit scores to access credit cards, Andrew Haughwout, an in-house economist, said in the report. (Read more from “Americans’ Debt Level Notches a New Record High” HERE)

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Highest Credit Card Debt Level in History

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American consumers just hit a scary milestone.

They now collectively have the most outstanding revolving debt — often summarized as credit card debt — in U.S. history, according to a report Monday released by the Federal Reserve. Americans had $1.021 trillion in outstanding revolving credit in June 2017. This beats the previous record in April 2008, when consumers had a collective $1.02 trillion in outstanding credit revolving credit.

“This record should serve as a wake-up call to Americans to focus on their credit card debt,” said Matt Schulz, a senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com, a credit card website. “Even if you feel your debt is manageable right now, know that you could be one unexpected emergency away from real trouble.”

Revolving credit had been growing at an annual growth rate of 4.9%. One reason: More consumers are getting access to credit cards backed by major banks and issuers in recent months. More than 171 million consumers had access to those cards in the first quarter of 2017, the highest number that has had access since 2005, when about $162.5 million people had access. (Read more from “Highest Credit Card Debt Level in History” HERE)

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The World Is Now $217,000,000,000,000 in Debt and the Global Elite Like It That Way

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The borrower is the servant of the lender, and through the mechanism of government debt virtually the entire planet has become the servants of the global money changers. Politicians love to borrow money, but over time government debt slowly but surely impoverishes a nation. As the elite get governments around the globe in increasing amounts of debt, those governments must raise taxes in order to keep servicing those debts. In the end, it is all about taking money from us and transferring it into government pockets, and then taking money from government pockets and transferring it into the hands of the elite. It is a game that has been going on for generations, and it is time for humanity to say that enough is enough.

According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt has now reached a new all-time record high of 217 trillion dollars…

Global debt levels have surged to a record $217 trillion in the first quarter of the year. This is 327 percent of the world’s annual economic output (GDP), reports the Institute of International Finance (IIF).

The surging debt was driven by emerging economies, which have increased borrowing by $3 trillion to $56 trillion. This amounts to 218 percent of their combined economic output, five percentage points greater year on year.

Never before in human history has our world been so saturated with debt.

And what all of this debt does is that it funnels wealth to the very top of the global wealth pyramid. In other words, it makes global wealth inequality far worse because this system is designed to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.

Every year the gap between the wealthy and the poor grows, and it has gotten to the point that eight men have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people on this planet combined…

Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam today to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos.

This didn’t happen by accident. Sadly, most people don’t even understand that this is literally what our system was designed to do.

Today, more than 99 percent of the population of the planet lives in a country that has a central bank. And debt-based central banking is designed to get national governments trapped in endless debt spirals from which they can never possibly escape.

For example, just consider the Federal Reserve. During the four decades before the Federal Reserve was created, our country enjoyed the best period of economic growth in U.S. history. But since the Fed was established in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by approximately 98 percent and the size of our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

It isn’t an accident that we are 20 trillion dollars in debt. The truth is that the debt-based Federal Reserve is doing exactly what it was originally designed to do. And no matter what politicians will tell you, we will never have a permanent solution to our debt problem until we get rid of the Federal Reserve.

In 2017, interest on the national debt will be nearly half a trillion dollars.

That means that close to 500 billion of our tax dollars will go out the door before our government spends a single penny on the military, on roads, on health care or on anything else.

And we continue to pile up debt at a rate of more than 100 million dollars an hour. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt once again in 2018…

Unless current laws are changed, federal individual income tax collections will increase by 9.5 percent in fiscal 2018, which begins on Oct. 1, according to data released today by the Congressional Budget Office.

At the same time, however, the federal debt will increase by more than $1 trillion.

We shouldn’t be doing this, but we just can’t seem to stop.

Let me try to put this into perspective. If you could somehow borrow a million dollars today and obligate your children to pay it off for you, would you do it?

Maybe if you really hate your children you would, but most loving parents would never do such a thing.

But that is precisely what we are doing on a national level.

Thomas Jefferson was strongly against government debt because he believed that it was a way for one generation to steal from another generation. And he actually wished that he could have added another amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would have banned government borrowing…

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

And the really big secret that none of us are supposed to know is that governments don’t actually have to borrow money.

But if we start saying that too loudly the people that are making trillions of dollars from the current system are going to get very, very upset with us.

Today, we are living in the terminal phase of the biggest debt bubble in the history of the planet. Every debt bubble eventually ends tragically, and this one will too.

Bill Gross recently noted that “our highly levered financial system is like a truckload of nitro glycerin on a bumpy road”. One wrong move and the whole thing could blow sky high.

When everything comes crashing down and a great crisis happens, we are going to have a choice.

We could try to rebuild the fundamentally flawed old system, or we could scrap it and start over with something much better.

My hope is that we will finally learn our lesson and discard the debt-based central banking model for good.

The reason why I am writing about this so much ahead of time is so that people will actually understand why the coming crisis is happening as it unfolds.

If we can get everyone to understand how we are being systematically robbed and cheated, perhaps people will finally get mad enough to do something about it. (For more from the author of “The World Is Now $217,000,000,000,000 in Debt and the Global Elite Like It That Way” please click HERE)

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New Poll Shows Americans Do Not Want the Debt Ceiling to Be Raised

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A large number of Americans across the political spectrum have come to an agreement on one thing: Congress should not raise the debt ceiling.

According to the Morning Consult, a joint poll between the Morning Consult and Politico was taken between June 15 and 19, asking, “Do you believe that Congress should or should not raise the debt ceiling, the amount of money the U.S. government can legally borrow?”

The debt ceiling, as stated by the Department of the Treasury, is the total amount of money the government is authorized to borrow to fulfill its existing legal obligations. It does not raise the total amount of money the government is authorized to spend.

Results of the poll indicate that a majority of Americans do not want the debt ceiling to be raised.

However, the Department of the Treasury states that not raising the debt ceiling would lead the government to defaulting on its legal obligations, causing “catastrophic economic consequences” that would “precipitate another financial crisis and threaten the jobs and savings of everyday Americans.”

Despite such a warning from the Department of the Treasury, 57 percent of Americans do not want to raise the debt ceiling. Sixty-four percent of Republican voters and 49 percent of Democrat voters oppose raising the debt ceiling.

Only 2 in 10 voters say they believe Congress should raise the debt ceiling, according to the poll, with only 20 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of Democrats in support.

There is a higher level of support for raising the ceiling from individuals who make over $100,000. Of those, 30 percent are in favor. However, a majority, 53 percent, of these higher earners oppose raising the ceiling.

For paid government workers and those who receive their salaries from the Treasury, the results were similar. Thirty-one percent said they support raising the debt ceiling, while 54 percent oppose.

According to Romina Boccia, a leading fiscal and economic expert at The Heritage Foundation:

Nearing $20 trillion and already in excess of the economic product created in the U.S. this year, the only responsible choice in dealing with our national debt at the debt limit is to pursue spending controls before raising the debt ceiling again.

“It is both morally and economically wrong to continue burdening younger generations with overspending and overborrowing without controls. Congress should put the budget on a path to balance and enshrine this path with a firm spending limit that cuts spending automatically when Congress fails to act,” Boccia continued. “The current path of automatic spending increases is detrimental to America’s fiscal and economic future.”

The Morning Consult poll was a national survey of 2,051 Americans with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. (For more from the author of “New Poll Shows Americans Do Not Want the Debt Ceiling to Be Raised” please click HERE)

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National Debt Will Hit $20 Trillion After Next President Is Sworn In

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The next president will face a nation debt of $20 trillion, nearly double what it was when President Barack Obama took office.

The national debt likely will reach the staggering $20 trillion figure in 2017, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

On March 16, the new president and Congress will have to reach an agreement on the debt limit—which will likely be $20.1 trillion, according to the center’s projection. That will last until mid-summer, before another negotiation will ensue on borrowing more to pay the government’s bills.

“There are a number of uncertainties between now and then and we don’t know exactly what the revenues and outlays will be, but we project the total gross debt will hit $20 trillion sometime in February,” Shai Akabas, director of fiscal policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“February is typically a bad month for the national debt because a lot of tax refunds go out then.”

The national debt currently stands at $19.8 trillion. When Obama came into office in January 2009, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. The spending agreement Obama reached with Congress in late 2015 allowed the Treasury Department to borrow another $1.5 trillion before he leaves office in January 2017.

To put the $20 trillion figure in perspective, MarketWatch reported in September the combined valued of all 500 major corporations in the S&P 500 were valued at $19.1 trillion as of the summer of 2016. These companies include Apple Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Facebook, and other giants.

Further, the U.S. national debt is more than all of the world’s physical currency, gold, silver, and bitcoin, according to MarketWatch. The combined value of every dollar, euro, yen, pound, and other physical currency is $5 trillion. The world’s physical gold is worth $7.7 trillion and the world’s physical silver is valued at $20 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that gross debt in 2017 will reach $20.16 trillion, but did not have a month-by-month breakdown as of deadline. The budget office’s 10-year debt projection estimates the national debt will reach $28.19 trillion in 2016. The amount of debt held by the public will be 77.2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2017.

By 2026 the publicly held debt will be 85.5 percent of the economy, according to the budget office.

Treasury Department spokesman Rob Runyan told The Daily Signal that the department does not have a projection to share.

For the next president and Congress, the challenge will be to slow the rate of debt’s growth. This is because a cut in the national debt won’t come unless there is a budget surplus, which no one projects, Akabas said.

Akabas thinks a deal for bipartisan entitlement and tax reform is possible over the next two or four years, while both parties will have areas where they want to spend more.

“Health care is the biggest driver of government spending with Medicare and Medicaid,” Akabas said. “But, Republicans are concerned about defense and Democrats are worried about domestic [spending]. There will be some dialogue about giving back in those areas.”

While divided government can lead to gridlock, Akabas also has some optimism.

Congress and the new president could reach a bipartisan plan to tackle the debt in a way that wouldn’t cause one party to be blamed. Further, he said he anticipates such a debt plan—that would require some unpopular actions—could be offset with popular items such as more infrastructure spending.

There are actions that Congress and the next president can take to rein in the debt, but the problem might be what realistically will be done, said Romina Boccia, deputy director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

“A lot can be done in the next administration’s budget proposal and with Congress’s follow up,” Boccia told The Daily Signal. “Neither candidate for president has a strong plan for addressing the debt.”

She said there is still potential to control the debt.

“The House Budget Committee has presented a plan that can make a real difference,” Boccia said. “Any plan will have to include entitlement reforms, health care spending reforms, and Social Security reform.” (For more from the author of “National Debt Will Hit $20 Trillion After Next President Is Sworn In” please click HERE)

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Within a Generation, Our National Debt Will Cost the Typical Family $12,000

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When confronted in the final presidential debate with the assertion that each of their plans would increase the national debt, the candidates denied it by saying either economic growth or higher taxes would offset this increase.

But deficit spending and unsustainable debt pose a significant threat to our economy. The House Budget Committee recognizes this threat, recently releasing a working paper highlighting the damaging economic effects of the national debt. The results are scary.

As the government runs increasing budget deficits, it must borrow more money to fund current commitments, such as entitlements, and make interest payments on the debt. This makes interest rates a larger share of the federal budget and in turn increases borrowing by the government.

Academic research shows that high national debt is associated with less economic output and less prosperity for individuals and families.

The Congressional Budget Office’s projections reflect this. Compared to a future where the government adopted reforms that stabilized debt at the current level of 75 percent of gross domestic product, the current path of growing spending and debt results in an annual income loss of about $12,000 for the average family by 2046.

We already are seeing the debt, approaching $20 trillion, drag down the economy. The recovery from the 2009 recession is the weakest in the modern era. Over the past five years, real GDP growth has averaged slightly more than 2 percent, below the historical average of 3 percent.

Even though the unemployment rate of 5 percent seems to indicate a healthy economy, a closer look at the numbers shows a different picture.

According to the House Budget Committee report, the number of individuals working part time due to poor economic conditions since the recession has jumped by 42 percent, and about 14 million Americans have left the labor force since early 2009.

Congress and the new president must begin to take our deficit spending and growing debt seriously.

Lawmakers should not raise taxes to try to solve the government’s fiscal problems. Our debt and deficits are the result of a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Paul Winfree, director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, writes that “revenue growth cannot keep up with spending if spending increases at a rate faster than the economy is growing in the long run.”

This is exactly the scenario we’re witnessing, given current projections.

Raising taxes would weaken the economy further and worsen the fiscal trajectory. The United States already has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world; raising taxes higher would discourage investment and job creation.

Instead, lawmakers should focus on reforming the drivers of our national debt: entitlements. Medicare, Medicaid, other health care programs, and Social Security together made up 52 percent of the budget in 2015.

The Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for Balance” and “Blueprint for Reform” lay out a detailed plan to reform entitlements and control spending to balance the budget and reduce the debt.

America needs presidential leadership to control spending and debt and return to a balanced budget. (For more from the author of “Within a Generation, Our National Debt Will Cost the Typical Family $12,000” please click HERE)

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Reminder: Our National Debt Grew $540 Billion Last Year

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With all of the attention given to the presidential elections, it’s easy to forget that the U.S. just ended the 2016 fiscal year. This means it’s time for the annual examination of how much more debt we have!

According to the newest Treasury Department figures (H/T to The Washington Examiner and CNS News), total U.S. debt held by the federal government was $19.573 trillion on October 1. That’s an astronomical amount of debt, quite a bit larger than our current Gross National Product.

As the Examiner and CNS pointed out, and the Treasury numbers confirmed, U.S. debt technically jumped more than $1.4 trillion in the last 12 months. That’s thanks to the Treasury Department temporarily not taking on more debt via use of “extraordinary measures.” Those measures staved off a debt increase from March 2015 through early November — and then the debt jumped hundreds of billions of dollars within a month.

Looking at the Fiscal Year 2016 debt in context to our larger debt picture, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in August that the annual deficit would be about $540 billion. That’s larger than immediate prior years, but lower than what we’ll see over the next decade. (The deficit and an increase in the national debt are two different things, thanks to how the federal government does its accounting.)

Contrary to liberal tripe about the feds needing more taxes, CBO projects that government revenues via taxes, fees, etc. will rise over the next decade as a percentage of GDP and continue to be above the 50-year average. The real culprit for our growing debt, spending, will go up even more — well beyond the 50-year norm — putting the U.S. at an even worse fiscal position than we’re at now. CBO projects we will add nearly $8.6 trillion to our debt by 2026.

But even this scary scenario, which would likely impact our economy’s growth, doesn’t tally up the worst of it all. The big-picture analysis most often cited by media outlets is the “baseline” projection by CBO — the optimistic one. In the August projections, CBO gave a list of alternative fiscal scenarios that could play out, depending on the decisions politicians make. A quick tally of those scenarios shows that the debt could be as much as $2.755 trillion higher than the positive projections, or $792 billion lower.

Short version: We don’t need more taxation. We need more economic growth and less spending. However, neither party wants to effectively reform the entitlements (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and other parts of the budget that don’t get annually approved by Congress) that are the major cause of our budget increases in recent years, and are projected to, for the most part, rise in cost. And effective tax reform is nowhere to be seen. (For more from the author of “Reminder: Our National Debt Grew $540 Billion Last Year” please click HERE)

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Congratulations America! New Chart Illustrates Your Massive Debt Problem

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Have you wondered how big our federal debt really is?

Well, thanks to an array of awesome investment themed maps published by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, you can take a look for yourself.

According to the chart below, there is currently $60 trillion in outstanding public debt — or in other words, the combined debts of all the world’s governments.

Sadly, among the great accomplishments of the United States — world superpower, first to conquer outer space, historic experiment in democracy, shining city on the hill, etc etc — the U.S. is also renowned for owning the largest share of that world’s debt.

That’s not something we should be proud of.

Even worse, the U.S. holds 29 percent of all world government debt but makes up 23 percent of the world economy. That means we owe more than we’re putting out in value. Or, put another way, our collective mouth is writing checks that our collective funds can’t cash.

Today, the U.S. government has more than $19.42 trillion in outstanding debt. That amounts to more than $60,000 per person living in America. Or, put differently, that’s $140,000 per taxpayer — those who are truly on the hook for paying off what our government has spent “for our benefit.”

Percent of all world government debt

(For more from the author of “Congratulations America! New Chart Illustrates Your Massive Debt Problem” please click HERE)

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House-Passed Debt Relief for Puerto Rico Splits Conservatives

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A bill establishing a legal framework for Puerto Rico to restructure its $72 billion debt load passed the House by a 297-127 vote after months of haggling among the Obama administration, Democrats, bondholders, unions, Puerto Rico officials—and conservatives.

About the only thing conservatives agree on about legislation the House passed Thursday night providing rescue to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis is that it’s not a bailout.

“There are good reasons to be for the bill, and there are good reasons to be against the bill, but this is not a bailout,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., referencing the fact that Congress’ solution does not include federal taxpayer money for Puerto Rico. “I certainly don’t want to see people saying I voted against it because it’s a bailout. That is a cheap, and intellectually dishonest way to deal with this. I hope we take it to a higher level intellectually and be honest on both sides of the aisle.”

Hosting a briefing for reporters Thursday afternoon on Capitol Hill, conservative House members laid bare their differences over the bill.

Mulvaney, a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, opposed the bill.

Ever since House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., promised to act on a solution for Puerto Rico and its 3.5 million American citizens, the debate over what Congress should do was an uncomfortable one for conservatives who have little sympathy for financial mismanagement.

But Puerto Rico’s debt crisis is unique.

While financially struggling American cities have access to debt relief under Chapter 9 of the U.S. bankruptcy code, Puerto Rico is exempt from this right as a territory.

When the original version of the bill, introduced in April, was rejected by Republicans who stopped it from even getting a vote, some conservatives realized they could use their positions to shape the legislation in a positive way.

Most prominent among those actors was Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, a leader of the Freedom Caucus, who is Puerto Rican.

Labrador voted in favor of the bill, which he helped negotiate.

The 40 or so members of the Freedom Caucus were unusually quiet during negotiations of the bill, deferring to Labrador and the closeness he has with the issue, tied to the island by his heritage and his presence on the congressional panel with jurisdiction over Puerto Rico, the Natural Resources Committee.

Though fellow conservatives credited Labrador with adding provisions favorable to them to the bill, by including language that payments to pensioners would not be prioritized over secured debt—among other things—many of his colleagues did not ultimately follow his lead.

“There’s been good arguments from my colleagues, but with one most important caveat,” said Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., a Freedom Caucus member who voted against the bill. “The people of Puerto Rico have to be in favor of this. If they are in favor of it, I am in favor of it. A former governor is against it, the current governor is against it, the people are against it. The United States Congress does not ever have the right to overrule the legislative body of another territory.”

Labrador, who spoke at the briefing on Capitol Hill with Brat, quickly interrupted the Virginia freshman, noting a ruling from the Supreme Court Thursday that said Puerto Rico is not sovereign, even though it has its own government and constitution.

“The Supreme Court today affirmed the responsibility we do have [for Puerto Rico],” Labrador said. “What I fear, actually, is that because of the responsibility we have, that not only is the bill not a bailout out, but I believe this bill is preventing a bigger cry for a bailout to these states like Illinois and California that are mismanaging their finances.”

The Puerto Rico debt relief legislation provides new federal oversight over the island by creating a control board with powers to manage the territory’s financial affairs, and enforce balanced budgets. The board’s seven members are to be appointed by President Barack Obama, from a list of names provided by congressional leaders.

There would be a stay on litigation as the control board gets an opportunity to oversee negotiations between creditors and the Puerto Rican government over settling terms of the debt.

In an example of the split between conservatives, though many support the concept of a restructuring board, and believe it can help Puerto Rico enact economic reforms, some wish the legislation contained more “pro-growth” provisions.

The Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative group in the House, expressed disappointment that House leaders prevented a vote on an amendment to the bill that would have exempted Puerto Rico from the Jones Act.

The Jones Act, meant to protect American shipping interests, requires vessels transporting goods within the country to be U.S.-built and owned, and at least 75 percent U.S.-crewed.

“While I would like to help the restructuring, I think in a broad context it’s a bad message for other entities,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., a Freedom Caucus member who supported the bill despite some reservations. “What it does do in the broader context is this is the beginning of the end. Puerto Rico is a unique situation, but I think in the broader context, the American people will see it for what it appears to be.”

At least one conservative is able to put any tension over the bill aside.

“The great thing about conservatives is we can disagree, but I know Raúl [Labrador] is smart and Raúl is a good guy,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who opposed the legislation. “It’s possible the board could address these issues, especially with the way Raúl has helped reform the board, and I’m grateful he has.” (For more from the author of “House-Passed Debt Relief for Puerto Rico Splits Conservatives” please click HERE)

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