PHOTO: Dave Lebryk, speaking in September 2015.
According to the left-leaning Washington Post, the guy in charge of paying the bills for the federal government is named Dave Lebryk, the Treasury Department’s ‘fiscal assistant secretary’.
He oversees more than $6 trillion dollars worth of bills each year.
Maybe I’m being judgemental, but I wonder about the government putting an ‘assistant’ in charge of the largest payment system in the world?
I can’t even imagine having to pay out $6 trillion. My credit card is my biggest monthly bill, and it’s only $240. If I just pay the interest, I mean.
I wonder if Dave is paying only the interest? That’s what a lot of us are doing.
The Washington Post article, by reporter Jeff Stein, says that Dave starts his day by looking at a color-coded ‘dashboard’ on his computer. The color ‘green’ means everything is normal. ‘Yellow’ means essentially the same thing it means in a traffic signal: something is about to change, and you want to either slow down, or drive a lot faster.
‘Red’ means… well, we don’t want to think about what ‘red’ means.
But we might want to consider the color ‘green’. It’s typically thought to be a good color. And as mentioned, to Dave Lebryk, it means everything is ‘normal’. Which is to say, the federal debt is growing unmercifully.
Dollars are flowing. Borrowed dollars, mostly. Dave oversees the spending of $6 trillion, but his income is only $5 trillion. Where does the $5 trillion come from? From you and me, and we probably put it on our credit cards.
So maybe we have a problem. And it’s not just Dave’s problem.
From Jeff Stein’s article:
Lebryk, for instance, provides the financial estimates to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, which are then sent to Congress as warnings of the “X date” deadline by which the nation will have exhausted its funds. He plays a crucial role in coordinating and determining how much money the Treasury needs to borrow to finance the government. His team also prepares and manages the “extraordinary measures” that the Treasury has been deploying since January to delay a default for as long as possible.
Once you read that paragraph in the Washington Post, you are offered a link to a different article, also by Jeff Stein:
The doomsday scenarios if America crashes through the debt ceiling.
I do not recommend reading that particular article. It starts like this:
Federal workers furloughed. Social Security checks for seniors on hold. Soaring mortgage rates. A global financial system sent reeling…
I wonder how a reporter like Jeff Stein is able to sleep at night?
Reportedly, some Republicans in Congress have been telling Dave that he should start paying only certain bills — while everyone is fighting about the debt ceiling — and let the other bills slide. That’s what we all do, I suppose. Especially alimony. That’s a bill that some of us are happy to let slide.
From what I hear, a lot of Congressional leaders are paying alimony.
If Dave Lebryk pays only some of the government bills, of course, he would have to decide who gets paid and who doesn’t.
Department of Defense contractors, I imagine, would be at the top of the list to get paid, because they make bombs. You don’t want defense contractors pissed at you.
And people on Social Security. You would definitely want to pay them. After military contractors, seniors are the next most dangerous group.
One of the funny aspects to this whole story is that Congress is the branch of government that approves the annual budget. So basically, the same people who voted to rack up $6 trillion in bills are the same people now complaining about paying those bills.
I know exactly how they feel. I’m the one who made the decision to take out my student loans. But they didn’t tell me, in college, I would end up working as a journalist.
I was hoping to be a defense contractor by now.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.