Paying it Forward: A Look at the Looming National Debt
By Kerry Young, CQ Staff
Robert Zachritz has lots of ideas for spending $51 million.
“Someone on that kind of budget, shopping our holiday gift catalog, could fund 1,307 health clinics to serve 10.5 million people, or pay to drill 2,833 deep wells that would provide 850,000 people with clean water,” said Zachritz, director of advocacy and government relations for WorldVision, a poverty-fighting organization.
Closer to home, $51 million would more than cover any of the following: adding the equivalent of 94 full-time inspectors to improve the safety of imported food, developing a “Minuteman Corps” to ease staffing shortages at Veterans Affairs Department hospitals now overwhelmed by the needed of injured returning soldiers, or providing a year’s worth on Energy Department research in wind energy.
What else does that $51 million represent? Just about one hour’s average payment of interest on the U.S. debt.
A single hour.
The United States spent more than $451.15 billion on interest payments on U.S. Treasury securities in the fiscal year ended in September, or more than $1.2 billion a day. Interest is the fourth-biggest monthly expense for the federal government, trailing only the costs of the Defense Department, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicare and Medicaid.
And next year’s tab is sure to climb, with Democrats and President-elect Obama agreed on pumping billions into projects such as road repair to stir the lagging economy. That’s certain to tilt the ratio that measures how the U.S. debt compares with its economy, or gross domestic product (GDP), defined as the total market value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given period of time. That ratio now stands at more than 70 percent, with $10.6 trillion debt matched against GDP of about $14.4 trillion.
(The article is here.)
Robert Zachritz has lots of ideas for spending $51 million.
“Someone on that kind of budget, shopping our holiday gift catalog, could fund 1,307 health clinics to serve 10.5 million people, or pay to drill 2,833 deep wells that would provide 850,000 people with clean water,” said Zachritz, director of advocacy and government relations for WorldVision, a poverty-fighting organization.
Closer to home, $51 million would more than cover any of the following: adding the equivalent of 94 full-time inspectors to improve the safety of imported food, developing a “Minuteman Corps” to ease staffing shortages at Veterans Affairs Department hospitals now overwhelmed by the needed of injured returning soldiers, or providing a year’s worth on Energy Department research in wind energy.
What else does that $51 million represent? Just about one hour’s average payment of interest on the U.S. debt.
A single hour.
The United States spent more than $451.15 billion on interest payments on U.S. Treasury securities in the fiscal year ended in September, or more than $1.2 billion a day. Interest is the fourth-biggest monthly expense for the federal government, trailing only the costs of the Defense Department, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicare and Medicaid.
And next year’s tab is sure to climb, with Democrats and President-elect Obama agreed on pumping billions into projects such as road repair to stir the lagging economy. That’s certain to tilt the ratio that measures how the U.S. debt compares with its economy, or gross domestic product (GDP), defined as the total market value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given period of time. That ratio now stands at more than 70 percent, with $10.6 trillion debt matched against GDP of about $14.4 trillion.
(The article is here.)
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