What is a Trillion?
During the W. Bush administration, the media relentlessly bombarded the American people with the recklessness of the president and his spending. There was hardly a week that Americans were not reminded of the looming national debt financial crises. When Obama took office, these stories mysteriously disappeared from the media. For some reason the media outlets did not notice that Obama contributed to the national debt an amount equivalent to the national debt accumulated by all presidents before him. The national debt went from 9 trillion to 18 trillion during the Obama administration and continues to climb to it’s current 31 trillion level. Presidents from both political parties campaign on reducing the budget deficit, but they seem to forget the topic when they occupy the White House.
This article is not to blame any president or political party, but rather to sound the alarm on the looming crisis we are saddling our future generations. *
The national debt is the accumulation of the annual deficit. Each year the government levies taxes on citizens. This amount of taxes is then spent on government functions and programs. 
When the government spends more money than it taxes in a year, the overage amount is called the “budget deficit”. The accumulation of the annual budget deficit is the “national debt”.
At times, it is difficult to truly comprehend these huge numbers. The current national debt is $31,000,000,000,000. But how does the average citizen understand this figure? And does it matter for citizens to understand these figures and the ramification with the accumulation of such debt?
To understand or to relate to such a number, consider the acquisition of a mortgage on a house. When someone borrows $100,000.00 to purchase a house and the term of the mortgage is 30 years and the interest rate is 6%, then this is what the mortgage costs the borrower.
Principle: $100,000.00
Interest Rate: 6%
Term: 30 years
Total Cost: $215,838.19
As you can see from the above the total cost of the mortgage more than doubles.
Unlike a mortgage transaction, where the mortgage holder makes payments on the principal and interest, the federal government does not pay down its debt. The debt is rolled into new debt, from year to year.
When our government borrows money to compensate for the spending deficit it acquires (spends more than it takes), every 1 trillion the government borrows, the government obligates its citizens for the cost of this loan, in a similar way it costs a mortgage borrower. Let us assume the total US population is around 330 million and only 60% of the population pay taxes. So, for every 1 trillion dollar the government borrows it obligates every taxpayer with the financial burden of $5,050 in principle.
It is safe to assume this the payoff of this amount conservatively will double (principle X Interest X number of years to pay) since we are still in the borrowing mode not the paying down, it may take more than 30 years to pay this debt down.
Which means for every taxpayer this burden is $10,100 per one trillion dollars. Now consider the burden for this entire debt 31 trillion dollars which is the current national debt:
$10,100 X 31 = $310,000
So currently every tax paying citizen is obligated with the amount $310,000.
This is not only reckless but also immoral.
What adds insult to this reckless injury is the amount of government waste. Consider the below examples of how the government spends your taxes.
- Government taxpayer funded political ads.
- Over a 100 million to federal taxpayer funded grant to build an airport in a town of 75 residents
- Taxpayer funded chocolate festival in Hawaii
- 2 million Taxpayer funded intern program, with only one intern
- 16 million taxpayer funded food stamps to dead, duplicate, disqualified recipients.
- Fauci’s NIAID spent $478,188 to turn monkeys transgender
- $6.9 million smart toilet analyzes “anal print”
- Feds give $300,000 to virtual reality penguin study
- The State Department gave $25,000 in grants to Chinese surfers
- Harvard spent $75,000 in federal grants to blow lizards off trees with leaf blowers
- Section 70203 of the 2023 spending bill earmarks $200 million for Presidio Trust, a park located in the north end of San Francisco, which is represented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
- While the 2023 spending budget included $1.47 million to persuade Eastern Mediterranean youth to stop smoking hookah; it added $896,994 to give cigarettes to adolescents here in America.
- $3.45 million to send messages to mothers to encourage their teenage daughters to stop indoor tanning.
- $3.1 million interviewing San Franciscans about their edible cannabis use
- $968,932 on developing a master’s degree in research ethics in Myanmar;
- Hookers For Jesus ($530,190); tai chi classes in senior centers ($671,251); creating outdoor gardens at schools ($1.6 million); and space alien detection ($7 million). Story time at laundromats ($248,200); sex education for prostitutes in Ethiopia ($2.1 million); a social media war on tanning beds ($3.3 million); webcast-livestreamed eclipses ($3.7 million); and subsidized the airport on Martha’s Vineyard ($12 million).
- $250 million of your taxpayer dollars are going to building borders in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman.
- Partnering with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United States Embassy in Seoul is allocating up to a $150,000 grant to send ten Koreans aged 15-30 to Washington, D.C. for two weeks to learn about climate change activism.
This reckless spending has got to stop. However this reckless spending will never stop unless the citizens understand this burden and the possible consequences of such an enormous debt.
Where’s The Pork? U.S. Taxpayers Funded A Lot Of Wasteful Spending (2017-2019) (forbes.com)
*The writer of the article is not an economist, and the intent is to demonstrate the seriousness of what the government is obligating its citizens with. The cost of borrowing for the US government might be less as the interest rate might be less than what is indicated or the government is paying some or all the interest on the debt. in this article.