[fhayek]

Two things, click here to get an idea of what a trillion is:http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

Second, although the national debt is officially listed at about $14 trillion, click here http://www.usdebtclock.org/ to see various manifestations of our national debt. Go to the bottom where it lists unfunded mandates (Social Security, Medicare and the Prescription Drug Plan). This lists obligations that we are on the hook for, but have not yet been funded. It now stands at (take a shot of Bourbon) $113.2 trillion. Okay, you can back to whatever you were doing. Sorry.

[harpu]

"Trillions! We are now talking trillions!"

Using time to example the magnitude of the how much a trillion is...remember this; if ONE DOLLAR equaled ONE SECOND, a trillion dollars would equal 32,000 years in time.

[tired&retired]

9/30/2010 13,561,623,030,891.79

10/1/2009 11,920,519,164,319.42

Difference 1,641,103,866,572.37

[4rcane]

Should Washington be considering massive budget cuts? Probably not, because the economy is still very fragile and could very easily head back into a recession. This is what pass off as conventional wisdom amongst the establishment republicans, that a massive budget cut is bad for the economy. They don't seem to realize for every dollar they borrow, thats one less dollar for the economy to grow

[Nicojones]

I don’t understand why more people can’t see through the Dem BS on this issue. Maybe we just need to just show them a few pictures. Here’s one that I think sums everything up nicely:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/assets_c/2011/04/RAMclrfnl-040511-pie.jpg.cms1.php

[cranked]

Oh to the contrary, those numbers add up.....and have been adding up quicker in just over two years of the AnnointedIdiot’s reign than during the whole 8 years of the Bush administration....... =.=

[Hoodat]

Remember the good ol' days -- like in the early 2000s -- when annual deficits that skyrocketed to, say, $200 billion or $250 billion were found to be appalling?

But that's different. We had a Republican President back then.

[USS Alaska]

The government can't shut down -- not if people who rely on benefits from Washington want to keep eating and going to the doctor, and if we want to continue fighting three simultaneous wars.

After all the BS, here is what the author really believes, gummint good, shutting gummint down, bad.

I receive my monthly pittance from my gummint social security "lockbox" and if the gummint shuts down, I can go longer than any ball-less politician in DC.

[sickoflibs]

I also heard that 3 trillion of that 13 trillion debt is ‘owed’ to the Socal Security so the real debt is 10 trillion and the other 3 is IOUs to itself.

[Incorrigible]

Bump