Too much debt?

Generally speaking, I consider myself to be a fiscal conservative. Perhaps a more correct term would be fiscally responsible. It makes more sense to pay for things as you go. Of course there are certain exceptions, like using a mortgage (responsibly) to purchase a house. Likewise an economic depression or war sometimes may necessitate the government overextending itself.

That is what I expect of myself - and my government. Tax cuts are great, but if you give a tax cut, you need to reduce spending. The present administration assumed a budget that was running a significant surplus, yet even taking out the cost of the war (almost $600 billion at this point), the national debt has still increased by 60% in eight years - and that is prior to the impact of any debt incurred as a result of the apparent impending Wall Street bailout. The economics in play during the Bush administration did not justify unnecessary tax cuts which essentially decimated the hard earned fiscal positioning of the Clinton years.

I could write a lengthy post about the deficit, debt, etc. I could include numerous links from non-partisan sources, but I won't (well, maybe I can put up some links in a separate post). There are many theories that will argue one way or the other, whether the amount of debt we have is at an acceptable level, and so on. I think folks are able to do their own research if they care about the issues. Suffice to say, that for about 30 years (1950 - 1980) the total national debt remained fairly constant - around $2 trillion. It currently stands at over $9 Trillion without taking into account the impending bailout. The republican administrations since 1980 added roughly $6 Trillion.

How much is a trillion? In the U.S., a trillion is one, followed by twelve zeros. I did a little internet research and found a really great site buried in the NASA family of web sites that gave me a nice way to look at it. The analogy was constructed to help people understand how long a light year is. As you probably know, a light year is the distance light travels in one year or approximately six trillion miles. How can we comprehend such large numbers (thus the term astronomical numbers)? Without going through the details of the lengthy mathematical calculations, what it comes down to is that one trillion seconds is the equivalent of 31,546 years! In one could find a way to spend the current value of the debt at one dollar per second - over $31 million dollars a year - it would take nearly 300,000 years!

Seems to me we have too much debt! And this is just the tip of the iceberg!