A person could get a headache trying to figure out the federal budget. Of confused. Or depressed.
But we shouldn't be too hard on the government and its fiscal managers. After all, we know how hard it is to balance the family budgets. Imagine finagling billions and billions and trillions and trillions of dollars.
That got me thinking. Just how bad is the federal debt situation? And what's all this talk about my kids and grandkids being the ones holding the bag and having to dry up the government's red ink?
Most folks probably know that the U.S. government spends more each year than it takes in. That's the annual deficit. That figure keeps getting added to the federal debt, which is the accumulation of every year's shortfall between income and expenses.
Our national debt stands at five trillion dollars. To understand how large that number is, assume you'd have to come up with all the money yourself. For help, you could turn to your friendly State Lottery, right? Well, you'd have to win the twice-weekly, million-dollar drawing every week continuously, without fail, for the next 48,000 years. Some species evolve faster than that.
So? You may ask why is that important? In very simple terms it means that by servicing this debt we're not able to spend money on something -- anything -- else.
It's the finance charge, my friends. Just like our handy VISA and MasterCards sock us for several dollars each month for the privilege of purchasing goods and services on expected future earnings, Uncle Sam has to pay the Piper, too. Pay big. Really big -- in very big, round figures, between 200 - 300 billion dollars each year. To come up with this kind of money, you'd have to had won lottery drawings going back to the time of Jesus. In fact, for the past several years, this "finance charge" has been larger than the annual deficit itself. The government calls it "net interest." I call it a monotonous morass.
That's merely the "interest" payment on this mound of debt. To address the issue of our progeny paying off this debt, it would take 50 straight years of 100 billion-dollar annual budget surpluses to balance the books. That's $100 billion more collected from taxpayers than paid out. How likely is that? What's a budget "surplus" you might ask? After all, it's been a while since there was one.
According to the U.S. Budget for Fiscal Year 1996, which lists total budget receipts and outlays since the creation of this fair Republic, the last year we were in the black was 1969, with a surplus of slightly over $3 billion.
If history is any indication, don't hold your breath until our long-term debt either disappears or is substantially brought under control.
Some may say that the debt doesn't matter. Born in debt, live in debt, die in debt. How does it affect me or my family? By spending about one out of every six budget dollars merely to cover the interest charge on the debt -- forget about even reducing the principle -- that leaves fewer dollars to deal with pressing problems of the here-and-now.
Paying on the interest (or principal) of the debt means paying for goods and services rendered and received in the past. It's like buying a house or car on time. It's tough, but after a while, you've paid off the loan and at least there's a house or car to show for it.
What do we have to show for the national debt? What has it purchased that we and generations of our offspring can look back and identify as a tangible product? Whatever it is, it must be something grand to match the size of our debilitating debt.
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Fred W. Apelquist, III, M. Ed.
Approimately 630 words.
© 1995