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T H E   D E B T   T O D A Y

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        On October 1, 2010 the National Debt ticked past $13.6 Trillion for the first time ever. How much is $13.6 Trillion?

•	Well, you would have to spend $110,651 every minute from noon on the Fourth of July 1776 until noon on the Fourth of July 2011 in order to spend a total of $13.6 Trillion.
•	It would take the total area of 7 American football fields (including endzones), laid adjacent to one another, stacked to the height 103 feet higher than the Empire State Building to stack 13.6 Trillion one-dollar bills.
•	If you laid 13.6 Trillion one-dollar bills end-to-end, and if you flew Mach 1 (the speed of sound), it would take you 198 years to travel the entire length of the bills.
•	If you took those end-to-end 13.6 Trillion one-dollar bills, you could use them to make 14 lines from the Earth to the Sun.
•	If you spent $1,000 each and every second, 24/7, it would take you 433 years to spend $13.6 Trillion. (Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase '1-one thousand, 2-one thousand...' etc.)
•	Finally — and most depressingly — it would take over $44,000 from every man, woman, and child in America to pay off the current $13.6 Trillion debt level. At that instant, the Debt would begin building again as long as the government spends more than it takes in as taxes and revenues.

        According to the U.S. Debt Bureau, since March 1 of this year, the National Debt has risen $ 8.7 Billion each day on average. This is 51% larger than the last year of the Bush administration, which averaged an increase of $5.7 Billion each day. And it is 3,500 times larger than the last year of the Clinton administration, which averaged an increase of only $2.5 Million each day.

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G R A P H I N G   T H E   D E B T

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        The black line on the graph above maps the Bureau's 4,468 day-by-day data points, showing the movement of the Debt from January 1993 until now. The green line maps the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, as reported quarterly by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis. At present, our National Debt is 93.0% of GDP.

According to forecasts issued by the International Monetary Fund, U.S. National Debt will exceed the U.S. GDP in the year 2012 ! And the Treasury Department reported to Congress that the National Debt will top $13.6 Trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 Trillion by 2015 !

        The blue and red lines at the bottom of the graph show the years that Democrats and Republicans were [P] in the White House, [S] a majority in the Senate, and [H] a majority in the House of Representatives.
        While the reader may draw whatever conclusions seem warranted about the political issues raised, nevertheless the graph plainly demonstrates a couple of economic facts worth noting. First, the rise of the National Debt leveled off at the end of the Clinton Administration's and the Republican's Congressional "Contract With America" efforts to balance the budget toward the end of the 1990's. It began to rise again (and GDP flattened out) in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001. Also, by contrast, GDP declined as National Debt rose precipitously following the economic meltdown in late 2008.

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P R E S I D E N T I A L   D E B T

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        Here is a summary of the increase in National Debt levels over the last three Administrations:
        Clinton: The National Debt during the 8 years of this administration rose an additional $1.5 trillion (+37%). It should be noted that in the last year of the Clinton administration, there was a net $23 billion reduction in the debt.
        Bush: The National Debt in the 8 years of this administration rose an additional $4.9 trillion (+86%).
        Obama: The National Debt in the first year of this administration rose from $10.6 trillion to $12.3 trillion (+16%). To put that short time into perspective, the first year of the Clinton administration raised the debt 7% and the first year of the Bush administration raised the debt 3%. In the first year of this administration, the debt rose more than it did in the entire eight years of the Clinton administration.

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         ( NOTE: The above graph shows a slight anomaly in the 107th Congress 2001-2002. For the first five months of 2001, the Senate had 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, so Vice President Cheney (R) broke the tie. As this had the effect of giving the Republicans a majority, the Senate is shown above as red for that period. However, effective June 6, 2001, Sen. James Jeffords (R-VT) switched to Independent status and announced that he would caucus with the Democrats. This gave the Democrats a one-seat advantage, so from that date until the end of 2002 the Senate is shown in blue. )