Exploding U.S. Debt May Haunt Us Forever.

Sometimes I imagine our President many years in the future, sitting at a desk in the oval office early in the morning softly singing a particular refrain from the tune “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” The President rewrites the words to secretly confess a pressing desire: “So now [we’re] praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive cause if [we] gotta spend another [dollar on debt] I don’t think that [we] can really survive. I’ll never break [our] promise or forget [our] vow, but God only knows what [we] can do right now. [We’re] praying for the end of time, it’s all that [we] can do. Praying for the end of time, so [we] can end [our debt] with you!

The media pundits debate the outlook for our future if our spending continues out of control but the cold hard reality is that our Government’s debt has already grown to an unfathomable level. One source estimates that current and future obligations of the U.S. Government, including social security and medicare payments, exceed $65 trillion. That is 65 with twelve zeros after it! It’s also more than the entire world’s GDP and more than four times our own. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects our national debt to rise $9.3 trillion in the next ten years under team Obama, and some have estimated that the average 20 year old today will pay $114,000 more federal taxes during his/her working life just to pay the interest on that incremental increase. Can you imagine the total interest that debt will produce? Can you imagine actually trying to pay back the principal?

I agree that worrying about budget deficits while the world faces economic Armageddon makes little sense. However, our critical need to spend, and spend big, at this time should be tempered with at least some acknowledgment that an 800-pound gorilla of a national debt threatens to crush our economy for at least many generations to come, if not bankrupt us once and for all.

Now may not be the time to attack this problem, but our leaders better make it a serious priority soon. Having the Obama administration cite its intention to cut our budget deficit in half in five years when it knows full well that during that same period our total debt will grow $4.6 trillion is, to say the least, disingenuous. Further, Obama announcing a measly $100 million budget cut when apparently many on both sides of the aisle in Congress agree that more than $300 billion of unworthy projects is just begging to be cut immediately is insulting to Americans and should embarrass our leaders.

No one is suggesting that the solution to our growing debt problem will come easy. Even world-renowned economist, John Maynard Keynes, could offer little solace back in the 1930s Great Depression when asked about the long-term effects of higher deficit spending. His glib answer then is the now famous quote: “In the long run we’re all dead.” That’s not much of an outlook for the future and it certainly isn't change we can believe in.