Put on your boots, folks. The manure is getting deep.
The stimulus money that kept us from our depression kept unemployment below 8% as promised. It also wisely spent money and there was no waste. It also “saved” 2 million jobs that are easily accounted for…
Let’s just hope the 17.3% of the country that’s out of work believes everything will be okay. Here’s also hoping that our climbing national debt won’t screw our great, great grandchildren. Here’s hoping we don’t see a sickening jump in taxes. And here’s hoping that the coming wave of foreclosures and more unemployed Americas pushes the idea that we’re recovering… and that a depression can be averted.
Also, Obama can talk about reducing our debt spending and freezing spending all he wants… But it’ll never happen.
Maybe we’re morons, as the Administration believes. We believe that adding another $1.3 trillion to the national debt and then asking for a spending freeze on billions is a good thing.
But one thing’s for certain, it’ll have very dire consequences for taxpayers, which could cut back on spending, crippling the economy. Just take a look at all the red ink. Over the last year, the amount we owe has grown to more than half our GDP. And it could grow to 200% of GDP by in a few years without intervention. And you can bet that our credit will be downgraded…
So how do you get the money to pay off the debt?
To solve the debt problem, many believe that’ll require tax hikes and spending cuts. But hey, each of us, (when you divide out the debt), only owe a tab of $113,000. Great. There’s no way we can all pay that off. And higher taxes will only force many Americans to tighten their belts even more… possibly defaulting on the credit they’ve relied on for years.
And here’s something else you might find interesting.
It’s from the Family Security Matters site. Enjoy… sort of.
National Debt by the Numbers: What Does 12 Trillion Mean?
On Friday afternoon with no media present, President Barack Obama signed a bill which raises our public debt from $12 .394 trillion to $14.294 trillion.
That is an incredible amount of money, but do Americans even grasp how much money $1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is, let alone more than 14 trillion?
A million seconds ago, it was only twelve days ago. But a trillion seconds ago – it was 29,678 B.C. Woolly mammoths still roamed the earth, and the Great Lakes won’t be formed for another 20,000 years. Scientists estimate that there aren’t even one trillion stars in our galaxy (only 200 to 400 billion). Lined up end to end, one trillion dollar bills would circle the earth an incredible 380 times.
But our debt has already surpassed $12 trillion. That’s 13 million tons of one-dollar bills. In order to haul off all that cash, you would need more than 100,000 semi trucks. If we laid $12 trillion one-dollar bills side-by-side and end-to-end, we could pave all U.S. highways, streets, and county roads more than twice.
The website Defeat the Debt provides figures like those that put debt levels in understandable perspectives.
If I spent $1 billion a day, it would take just under 34 years of spending to reach the level of our national debt. Yet our federal government takes in trillions of dollars in revenue each year, and they still managed to run up a deficit this massive.
Our national debt wasn’t always so spectacular: only in 1982 did government break the $1 trillion mark. By 1990, the debt was $3.2 trillion. By 2000, it was $5.6. On Sept. 30, 2008, White House documents show that our public debt was $9.9 trillion. But in a matter of just a few months under the Obama administration, our debt has climbed by three trillion dollars. Bear in mind that it took over 200 years for the U.S. to accumulate one trillion dollars of debt. During that time we paid for one revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, a civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Marshall Plan, numerous other conflicts, the space program, and so on. But in a matter of months, our federal government – despite trillions of dollars in tax revenue each year – has accumulated almost three trillion more?
And all of this money being spent by government will have to be paid back by the American taxpayer.
According to USDebtClock.org, as this column went to press, the current share for each taxpayer was over $113,000. The bill signed on Friday by Obama states that any new spending must be paid for either through spending cuts or tax hikes. And which do you think the Obama administration and Congress will choose?
