Let's Forget about Deficits

We hear constantly about plans to “reduce the deficit.” It makes an attractive sound bite, but ignores the ever-increasing national debt.

If the Smith family spent $50,000 more than they made in 2008, and spend $40,000 more than they make in 2009, they will reduce their “deficit spending” by $10,000, or by 20%. However, with interest tacked on, the Smiths will double their debt during 2009, from 50K to 100K. This is obvious to anybody who cares enough to read 3 sentences. The problem is, many voters are listening to the sound bites and “deficit reduction” sounds like a good thing. The “debt increase” is rarely discussed.

Here’s a handy web page tracking the national debt where you can compare daily and monthly figures. http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway. I used this data to see how my share of the debt is changing. I had some trouble with these numbers at first, because I’m just not used to doing math with this many digits, so I started rounding to the nearest billion (see how quickly it becomes “a billion here, a billion there”).

On April 14, I had a decent day. I went to work and made money. My share of the national debt increased by only $30 (100 million taxpayers, $3 billion increase in debt that day).

April 15 was a bit harder on me: I left my business that day so I could go to a Tea Party. The national debt went up by $460 per taxpayer (46 billion) and I incurred no income. Thankfully, my husband was at work, but didn’t earn enough to cover our household expenses plus our share of that day’s national debt increase ($920 for two taxpayers). In case you want to know, the national debt increase for the past month was about $200 billion ($2000 per taxpayer). So after my family takes care of its household bills AND pays our taxes, we are still going on the hook for another $4K per month, courtesy of those who supposedly represent us.

Today, headlines said Obama has ordered his cabinet to find 100 million in budget cuts.. I’m normally one to applaud ANY spending cut, but that only results in savings of $1 per taxpayer. News that’s fit to print? The only “news” in that announcement is proof that our government knows we’re still not paying attention.

Before most voters are going to get worried about government spending, they need to understand how serious our situation is. Drop the deficit talk and pay attention to the debt.