{"id":1311517,"date":"2019-06-17T22:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T04:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/purcell-column-our-national-debt-is-out-of-control-but-nobody-seems-to-care\/"},"modified":"2019-06-17T22:52:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T04:52:00","slug":"purcell-column-our-national-debt-is-out-of-control-but-nobody-seems-to-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/purcell-column-our-national-debt-is-out-of-control-but-nobody-seems-to-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Purcell column: Our national debt is out of control, but nobody seems to care"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Tom Purcell<\/strong>
<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Breaking news: Federal spending is out of control.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m kidding, of course. Spending, deficits and debt have been out of control for years. It\u2019s just that last week we broke yet another record.<\/p>\n

For the first time in our nation\u2019s history, federal spending topped $3 trillion in a fiscal year\u2019s first eight months, according to last week\u2019s Monthly Treasury Statement.<\/p>\n

How much is $3 trillion? According to Kiplinger, $3 trillion would pay the salaries of every member of the U.S. Congress for the next 32,336 years.<\/p>\n

Of course the issue isn\u2019t just what the U.S. government spends. It\u2019s what the government spends relative to the tax revenue it takes in. In that regard, there\u2019s some good news and some bad news.<\/p>\n

The good news: The economy is doing well, causing tax revenue to swell. During this fiscal year\u2019s first eight months, federal tax revenues were the second highest ever collected (they were down slightly from last year\u2019s record amount).<\/p>\n

The bad news: Our government continues to spend way more than it takes in \u2014 about $800 billion more during this fiscal year\u2019s first eight months, despite tax revenue pouring in.<\/p>\n

That $800 billion adds to our national debt, which now stands at a whopping $22 trillion.<\/p>\n

How much is $22 trillion? If you were to repay $22 trillion at $220 million every day, it would take 273 years to pay off the balance \u2014 on an interest-free loan.<\/p>\n

In other words, we have a massive spending, deficit and debt problem, but few people seem to worry about it anymore.<\/p>\n

A recent Wall Street Journal article, \u201cHow Washington Learned to Love Debt and Deficits,\u201d sheds light on the regrettable lack of interest in taming our growing debt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn theory, an increased supply of government bonds \u2014 sold to raise funds when spending exceeds revenues \u2014 should increase government borrowing costs,\u201d write Kate Davidson and Jon Hilsenrath. \u201cTheory also says big deficits crowd out business borrowing and increase private borrowing costs, too. The opposite has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

What has happened is that the economy expanded by a robust 5.2 percent last year while the cost of government borrowing remained relatively low \u2014 one reason why immediate concerns over spending, deficit and debt concerns have waned.<\/p>\n

How long we can get away with heavy borrowing is anyone\u2019s guess. As baby boomers retire in big numbers, the costs of Social Security, Medicare and other government programs will soar. We already are not able to pay our bills. The Congressional Budget Office estimates we will begin falling $1 trillion short in 2022 and keep falling short by that amount annually through 2029.<\/p>\n

Even this English major can calculate that our national debt may stand at $33 trillion or more by 2030.<\/p>\n

How much is $33 trillion? It\u2019s $30 trillion more than the debt was in 1989, $28 trillion more than it was in 1999, $21 trillion more than it was in 2009 and $11 trillion more than it is now.<\/p>\n

It worries me that I\u2019m one of the few Americans left who worries that our deficits, spending and debt are out of control.<\/p>\n

So I may as well have some fun with the subject.<\/p>\n

If the U.S. government printed $1 million bills, a whole bathtub\u2019s worth of them wouldn\u2019t equal $1 trillion. And 33 bathtubs full of $1 million bills won\u2019t be enough to cover our national debt in 2030.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2019 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, author of \u201cMisadventures of a 1970\u2019s Childhood,\u201d a humorous memoir available at amazon.com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. For info on using this column in your publication or website, contact Sales@cagle.com<\/a> or call (805) 969-2829. Send comments to Tom at Tom@TomPurcell.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Purcell Breaking news: Federal spending is out of control. I\u2019m kidding, of course. Spending, deficits and debt have been out of control for years. It\u2019s just that last week we broke yet another record. For the first time in our nation\u2019s history, federal spending topped $3 trillion in a fiscal year\u2019s first eight months, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 06:12:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}