U.S. Debt Breaks $22 Trillion Barrier

Debt Binging!

We can’t let this benchmark event pass without remarking on it.  

The US national debt hitting $22 trillion, I mean.

It’s quite an achievement.  All of that money, all $22 trillion of it, had to be borrowed.  And borrowed it was, despite the fact that every lender knows it can never be paid back – except by borrowing more tomorrow.  

It’s sort of like a Ponzi scheme.  It’s quite an achievement for a sketchy borrower!

The US broke the $22 trillion borrowing ceiling on Monday, February 11.  

Just to review, its borrowing reached $1 trillion during President Reagan’s first term.  It broke above $10 trillion at the end of Bush the Younger’s presidency.  And hit $20 trillion at the end of Obama’s tenure.

Imagine that.  The national debt doubled during the Obama presidency.  Who would have thought?

Think about this for a moment.  America won its independence in the Revolutionary War, fought the War of 1812, made the Louisiana purchase and that of Alaska, fought a Civil War, the Spanish American War, two world wars, Korea and Vietnam, and put a man on the moon – all without accumulating a national debt of $1 trillion.  

And yet the debt climbed another trillion dollars in just the last 11 months.  (It hit $21 trillion last March.)  

Well, the only thing changing about the debt trajectory is that it keeps getting steeper.  

Worse, still, is that there is no coalition in Congress to do something about it.  Out of 535 members of Congress, only 7 voted last year to reduce federal spending.  

So, I think we can all see where US debt binge is headed.