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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We Have Officially Gone Over the Sanity Cliff

Maybe the Mayans were right and we’re all too apathetic to notice that the world really has come to an end.

We are no longer facing the fiscal cliff…We’ve officially gone over it, for now. Today, maybe tomorrow or perhaps later in the week, the House will attempt something only seen previously in cartoons…Hanging in mid-air, turning around and trying to run back to safety before gravity sets in.

Last night, the senate passed a sort of, almost, not really fix for the fiscal crisis in that it included no spending cuts, doesn’t deal at all with sequester and only raises taxes on those making $400k per year.

The house hasn’t voted yet, and they might not like it at all since they didn’t like it when the tax hikes hit those making a million or more.

Given the fact that congress has a single digit approval rating, they waited until AFTER the last minute to do anything on this fiscal cliff issue and the senate hasn’t passed a budget in 1400 days or so…

Naturally they all deserve a raise.

Right?

I mean, we’re now 16.4 TRILLION dollars in debt, taxes are going up, spending is NOT going down and Congress  is basically waiving the white flag so…Obama signs an executive order giving them all a raise.

That ONLY makes sense if the world actually HAS ended…Right?

$16.4 trillion dollars in debt…

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