The National Debt in perspective

I continue to be amazed at media outlets who seem to have absolutely no clue about the magnitude of the debt crisis we're in the middle of. The problem is much more dire than simply increasing our own credit limit.

Seriously, could you with a straight face tell your credit card company that you'll have a better ability to pay back your current debt as long as they increase it? It's laughable beyond belief.


For instance, if the US government could confiscate the entire 14 TRILLION dollar annual US economy, it could just about pay off the current debt that is owed. Of course, if they did that, the GDP would be Zero because no one would work for nothing. That doesn't even cover the 60 TRILLION, the US is set to pay in social security, medicare and government pensions.

Second, there is a limit to how much more money people will be inclined to loan us. No one has pushed the president as to what that number is but it is dangerously close when our debt to GDP relationship looks closer to the PIIG (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece) with increasing rapidity.

According to this OMB chart, our spending has gone up each and every year since 1948. That means in good times, spending has gone up, in bad times spending has gone up. Spending went up with Johnson, Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, Bushes etc. Can you seriously argue with a straight face that all these increases in spending are warranted.

This might be almost tolerable if we had something to show for it. But can you name one problem eradicated by government spending? Poverty looks every bit as bad as it did in 1960.

Even take all the money doled out in student loan aid and programs, is college more or less affordable to the average person than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago?

To make matters worse, can you name anything tangible our money has produced in the past twenty years.

FDR built national parks and infrastructure projects, Eisenhower built the interstate system, Kennedy pushed the space program. Now, as we watch the last space shuttle park and our bridges and roads crumbling around us, we can say that we're spending trillions of dollars on what that has a lasting impact on our country?

For once, I would just like Bob Shieffer et al, quit taking the lies (sorry they call it spin) and simply pin down these guys on the obvious.

Maybe we could get to real budget reform if these clowns would pin down Dirty Harry Reid on the obvious.