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Obama administration adding $3 million per minute to national debt
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An overwhelming majority, if not every single American cannot begin to comprehend the astronomical deficits and debt projections flowing from Washington these days. The Obama Administration and congressional Democrats have done an outstanding job of breaking down uninsured statistics into smaller more understandable numbers such as their 14,000 newly uninsured claim. Yet, when it comes to deficits and the national debt, no one in Washington seems to want the public to understand just how much money they are spending. Politicians talk in dollar amounts that no American, even the richest among us, will ever truly comprehend. As a result, in conjunction with PDOP, I have broken the numbers down for you.
The Obama administration released in the past 2 weeks revised projections that the 2009 deficit will amount to just shy of $1.6 Trillion dollars and that their long term budget projections will create $9 Trillion dollars of deficits in the next ten years. More than a year ago for another organization, I excoriated the Bush Administration for years of unchecked government spending culminating in the single largest deficit in US history. At the time, that budget deficit of half a Trillion dollars amounted to over $1 million dollars a minute in new national debt; an debt level that simply is not sustainable. With no balance of power in Washington this year, the drunken spending of politicians has tripled the record breaking Bush deficit, creating a phenomenal $3 million of new national debt every single minute (not total government spending, but new government debt). As a result, during the 8 hours of time you will spend at work today, the US government will go more than $1.4 billion into debt.
Just how much debt does $3 million a minute equate to? Consider the fact that the average American earns approximately $40,000 a year. As a result, the Obama administration's $1.6 trillion deficit is equivalent to the total earnings of 37.5 million Americans. What is even scarier, is that the deficit is projected to remain level next year, even without the addition of health care, immigration, education and tax reforms that remain on the President's agenda.
Our government cannot continue to operate in the fashion it currently is. During the Bush presidency we saw the national debt double and now the Obama administration is projecting that it will nearly double the national debt again. Depending on whether you read the Administrations estimates, the Congressional Budget Office projections or other non-partisan projections, the national debt is expected to rise to between $18 trillion and $23 trillion by 2019. Again the numbers seem staggering and unfathomable, but I can shed some light on just how much money that is. Considering our population of 300 million citizens, a $19 trillion debt in ten years would amount to $63,333 of national debt for every man, woman and child in the US. If our population was to grow to 450 million people by 2019, then the national debt would amount to $47,499 for every citizen. In other words, your personal share of the national debt will be the equivalent of some Americans current mortgages. Even more stunning is the realization that if wages were to grow at a 3% rate, the average American's share of the national debt would be more that their annual wages.
With a national debt approaching $19 trillion dollars, US taxpayers would be forced to pay a minimum of $950 billion per year in interest on such debt. That amount would be based upon the government's ability to finance debt at a 5% rate, which historically would be unlikely, considering the debt to GDP ratios. In order to finance the debt, the government would have to pay higher interest rates and as a result those interest payments alone would likely swell to as much as $1.5 trillion per year. Further complicating the nation's ability to finance our government's lust for debt, is the fact that more than 2 years ago, rating agencies issued warnings that the United States debt ration was likely to lead to a credit rating downgrade. Such a downgrade from our AAA status, would devalue the dollar and force an even larger rise in interest rates as lenders demand higher rates due to a greater risk of default. To reiterate a point, those warnings were first issued before the record deficits of the past two years.
By 2019, the national debt will have become so large that the very longevity of our nation will be at risk. The United States is the 800 lb. giant in the world's economy and the nation that time and time again has come to the aid of others when their monetary systems have collapsed. Unfortunately, if our monetary system collapsed under the weight of unsustainable debt, there will be no nation capable of rescuing our system.
Despite every projection, even those published by themselves, our elected officials continue to push for new social programs, expansion of government and trillions of dollars in new expenditures. When President Obama tells the American people that are nation cannot afford to do nothing in terms of health care, perhaps a question he should consider is whether our nation can afford to do anything about health care or address any other socio-economic issue? In the next ten years, our government will have no choice but to undertake massive reforms of social security and Medicare. Both systems are failing and within just a few years will be hemorrhaging more money than the tax system is taking in. Yet our elected officials seem content to abrogate their responsibility for these social programs while proposing the addition of larger and more expensive programs. At some point the American people must say enough is enough, and demand that our elected officials end their journey down a path that will straddle ourselves, our children and our grandchildren with a lifetime of debt and no way to pay for it.
You can view more statistics and a further discussion of your share of the national debt at PDOP. Be sure to subscribe to our email updates or by reader.
And by the way, in the time you read this article, our nation just went $15 million in debt.
