TAKING THE NATIONAL DEBT SERIOUSLY

The interest on the national debt makes our future unstable

• As of Sept. 30, 2009, the national debt was almost $12 trillion and interest on that debt was $383 billion for the year, according to the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt.
• The Congressional Budget Office on Oct. 7 estimated the 2009 budget deficit to be almost $1.4 trillion (about 10 percent of GDP).
• In August, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated total government revenues at about $2 trillion; the revenue estimate included $904 billion from individual income taxes.
• This means the cost of interest alone on the debt represented more than 40 cents of every dollar that came in from individual income taxes.

Left unchecked, this destructive deficit-debt cycle will leave the White House and Congress with either having to default on the national debt or instruct the Treasury to run the printing presses into a policy of hyperinflation.

It is against this background that Washington is now working to add health care entitlements of record breaking cost...

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image toon - mny = USam's empty pockets getting deeper