|
|
Remember--that's just the DEFICIT.
Posted by wizeGurl on 2007-01-04 13:24:16 | It's important to keep these terms straight in your head. The deficit is the difference between what the government takes in during a year and what it spends. The debt is the total amount the government owes to its debtors. The national debt has been growing at an alarming rate since about the mid-seventies.
To use an analogy we can all probably relate to, the deficit is like the difference between what you charge on your credit card in a given month, and what you pay for that month. If you spend $200 in May but only pay $100, your balance increases by $100.
The national debt, on the other hand, is like the total balance you carry on your credit card. You may owe thousands, even if your creditors only require you to pay a small portion each month. (That's okay for them...you're racking up interest on the rest.) The country, too, pays interest on the national debt it carries, even when there are budget surpluses in a given year...we haven't paid off the balance of the debt since we started using that "credit card." The national debt--the nation's "credit card" balance--is currently $8,681,630,459,449.45. That's over 8 and a half TRILLION, folks...and they're talking about adding another $1.76 trillion over the next ten years. (Your share of the current total, by the way, is $28,877.87.) And the interest the country pays on that debt? In 2006, it was $406 billion. By comparison, we spent $51 billion on all of NASA.
For the latest debt figures, check out the
U.S. National Debt Clock
|
|
Bumper Sticker Store
Now that he's lost control of both Houses of Congress, President Bush has decided that balancing the budget and stopping federal pork is a good idea, according to his Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today. Only 6 years after he got elected it is apparently time "to set aside politics and focus on the future." Whew.