The U.S. National debt stands, at this very minute, at $14,515,520,000,000. (and rising by the second)
The entire discussion is a fraud. It’s not just the ridiculous 10 year projections of growth and future budgets, it’s the fact that even the most ambitious of the Republican proposals would still require the country to pile up trilliions more in debt before they get anywhere near a balanced budget for a single year. They are not talking about cutting $2 trillion, $4 trillion or even $9 trillion off the actual accumulated debt - they are talking about reductions of the anticipated growth in that debt over the next ten years. Obama planned to run up another $12 trillion in debt over the next ten years. Cutting that growth by $4 bilion would still leave the US with an increase in the Net Debt from $12 billion to $20 billion. Almost every politician in Washington is lying to the American people about what this really means - even the Tea Party caucus.