It's worse than even that.
Public debt is about $6 trillion. Private debt is another $6 trillion. Can a country spend itself to prosperity by going into debt? So long as the economy expands almost everyone is happy, but a 2-year recession and counting kind of takes the fun out of it.
NASA is grounded until they figure out what to do with their International Orbiting Black Hole. Space Station Alpha? They should call it Space Station Omega. $30 billion right there doing nothing. $30 billion could build an impressive space infrastructure, bases on the moon and Mars and in between if they do it correctly.