In an October 2011 post, when we were a mere $14 trillion in debt, I tried to put the National Debt in Perspective. In that post I said:
"In 2010, The US government spent more than $413 Billion on interest payments alone. This is more than was spent on The Department of Health and Human Services…The Departments of Transportation, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Commerce…hold on, I’m almost done…The Department of Treasury, Department of Labor and the Small Business Administration …COMBINED. Just to service current debt. And, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the interest payments on the debt are projected to be $1.1 Trillion a year by 2021, a mere 10 years from now."I also pointed out that then it would have taken 384 years to pay off the debt if government stopped spending any other money and just paid $100,000,000 a day on the debt. That time frame has increased by 65 years to 449 years...in a year and a half.
Let me remind you that candidate Obama said of President Bush's addition of $4 trillion to the debt in eight years, "That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic." Which I agreed with. Now Obama will have raised the debt by more than $6 trillion in four years.
The Debt ceiling has been raised 10 times in the last decade, from $5.9 trillion to $16.4 trillion. And now, the Treasury is already calling for another hike, "As we saw last summer, it is important that the debt limit is raised in a timely manner," said Treasury Assistant Secretary Matthew Rutherford.
Our credit rating has already fallen. Our spending is out of control. We cannot continue to raise the debt ceiling. We cannot continue to pass results of the current government's irresponsibility down to our children, grandchildren ..and great, great grandchildren. We need to take responsibility. We need people who do not allow their votes to be bought with government hand-outs. We need serious adult leadership in government. We need to reduce the size and scope of government...and we can't put it off.