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America just achieved another milestone and not in a good way. This week our National Debt topped $40,000,000,000,000.00!
That's 40 trillion dollars. It's nearly impossible for us to comprehend just one trillion, but I will try. A million seconds ago was about 11 days ago. A billion seconds ago was 32 years ago. A trillion seconds ago was 32,000 years ago. But our debt isn't one trillion, it's 40 trillion, so 40 trillion seconds ago was well over a million years ago.
Our debt is completely out of control and the consequences are catastrophic is we don't reverse this trend. It took us 205 years to reach one trillion in debt. Now we are borrowing one trillion every five months.
It's like you going to see a local banker and wanting to borrow a large sum of money. The banker would look over your loan request and then ask how do you intend to pay it off, at which point you would say, I don't intend to pay it off, and I am going to come here every year borrowing even more with no intention and no plan to pay it off. The banker would quickly walk you out of the bank, and then go back in and tell every employee about the insane person who wanted to borrow money and never pay it back.
Well, that's what Congress does nearly every single day, as they hold what are called "public debt auctions". In simple terms it goes like this. The U.S. Treasury announces how much they need to borrow to pay the bills. Major financial institutions, banks, foreign governments and individuals can bid by saying they will buy "X" amount of debt bonds at "Y" amount of interest. Once the bidding ends, the Treasury picks the lowest interest bids first and then moves to the higher ones until the amount the Treasury needs at that time is satisfied.
Meanwhile, the country is paying interest on this $40 trillion. The interest alone will top one trillion dollars this year, and since the country only takes in five trillion a year, and spends seven trillion a year, that interest is nearly 20 percent of our entire revenue. The interest payments will soon top what we spend on national defense and Medicare, our two largest expenditures.
Can you see the debt spiral swirling faster and faster now? Who is responsible for this fiscal insanity? What can we do about it? What happens if we just do nothing?
Congress is totally responsible for this as they are the sole body that controls revenue and spending, and before you blame the Republicans or Democrats, history has proven they are equally at fault. To correct this they must raise taxes and cut spending, but they won't because they lack the courage to step up and do either, as they might lose their precious jobs. Would you vote for them if they told you they are going to raise your taxes a lot, or they were going to cut spending a lot on programs you think are important?
So short term, it's reasonable to conclude they will do nothing and we will continue to go further and further into debt, debt you and I will never pay off, debt that will be placed on our grandchildren's grandchildren, or worse, debt that will throw America into an unimaginable fiscal depression, taking other countries down with it.
As you know this is an election year and the American people are concerned with a lot of things, like the economy and cost of living. Things like healthcare costs and accessibility, things like immigration and border policy, taxes, the Iran War, inflation, housing, government corruption, threats to democracy, etc. And we should be concerned with all these issues, but if we don't address the debt, all these issues will get even worse.
I follow politics closely, maybe too close for my own health, and I see very little if any discussion about our national debt from candidates, who prefer concentrating on telling us what's wrong with the other side, and making promises they can't keep.
We and the media need to ask every national candidate to specifically explain their exact and detailed plan to balance the budget and begin paying down our crippling debt. If they are unable or unwilling to tell us their long-term plan to get us out of this debt spiral, then they don't deserve a single vote, not one. The debt is a financial hurricane we can see coming and to do nothing about it will be a fiscal disaster unlike ever before.
Congress has pissed off this grandfather who constantly worries about how my grandchildren will be able to afford a government they will want and need when they will by burdened for a lifetime paying off ours. No other American generation has done this to future generations, yet Congress does nothing.
Does the national debt matter to you? Let me know at gregawtry@awtry.com.