Weekend Edition: The Problem IS Spending

When we look at the numbers being bandied about in Washington these days, we know they’re BIG but, it’s just impossible to fully wrap our heads around them.

The national debt is $16.5 TRILLION DOLLARS.

Our annual deficit for the last 4 years has averaged somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 or $1.3 TRILLION DOLLARS.

It’s staggering, isn’t it?

Billions…Hundreds of billions…TRILLIONS…

How does one even begin to understand such figures?

This is why so many simply toss up their hands and walk away from conversations regarding these unfathomable numbers.

Allow me to add some context.

Something by which we can come to terms with the sorts of dollars we’re talking about when we discuss our bleak economic situation.

I’ll start with a simple question regarding a number we CAN understand.

Here goes…

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With God Off the Platform, Michelle Anoints Saint Barack

It was fate.

Maybe Karma.

That it happened was not at all surprising but, WHEN it happened…THAT was astounding.

With near pinpoint accuracy, just as Debbie What’s-Her-Name-Schultz brought down the gavel to open the Liberal/Socialist Convention and Entitlement Fest…

The Debt Clock, the one featured SO prominently at the Republican Convention but, oddly nowhere to be seen at THIS week’s convention…

Clicked over $16 TRILLION DOLLARS.

Without question, both parties have had a hand in that debt.

Without question, Obama ripped George W. Bush for adding just over $4 trillion to it during his 8 years in office.

Without question, in less than HALF that amount of time, Obama had added $5,3 TRILLION to it.

Without question, Obama said he would cut it in half by the end of his first term.

Yesterday, when asked how he would grade himself on the economy, Obama answered, “Incomplete.”

Really.

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the National Debt

You know all those statistics thrown about where…If you take all of something nobody gives a rip about, and laid them end to end, they’d stretch from point A to point B?

As an example: If you took all the women George Clooney has dated, and laid them end to end…

(Go ahead and make your own jokes about how tired you’d be)

They would reach from Malibu to Manhattan…Give or take a Stacy Keibler.

I hate those kinds of statistics but, it’s not going to stop me from using one in this article.

We’re talking about our national debt.

Staggering? Is that how you would describe it?

Maybe you have heard that our national debt is skyrocketing. It is you know. Maybe MORE than you know. Alarming? That’s another term you’ve probably heard.

No doubt you’ve heard something about a “fiscal cliff” during national debt discussions.

Oh…If ONLY that were the extent of it. It’s not of course but, we can dream can’t we?

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