CHESSNOID

I think it is ironic that on most Americans on a personal level have increased savings and decreased spending, while on a national level the federal government is not saving at all but deficit spending into levels never seen before.  Simply put, the federal government is being fiscally irresponsible and doing the opposite of what most Americans would prefer.

There are two things the government can do to balance the budget.  One is spend less or in better terms only spend the amount of revenue brought in.  Second, increase revenues to match the federal spending which would mean increasing taxes.  The current Obama administration seems to be opposed to both ideas and would prefer to spend what is not there creating a problem with worse consequences down the road.  There is no distinction here between Bush and Obama except the Obama is spending at a faster rate.

This is  the unofficial forecast until next week when they announce it.

Washington Post:

The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates.

The new projections add approximately $2 trillion to budget deficits through 2019. Earlier this year, the administration had predicted that Obama’s policies would require the government to spend $7.108 trillion more than it collects in tax revenue over the next decade.

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report will not be formally released until Tuesday, said the change is due primarily to updated projections of economic growth that are far less rosy than data used when the White House released its first long-term budget outlook in February. At that time, the White House predicted the economy would shrink by 1.2 percent this year; in fact, the economy shrank at an annualized rate of 6.4 percent in the first quarter, the sharpest drop since 1980.

The number is huge and really hard to comprehend. I found a site that makes a good comparison of how much money this is. That’s when you realize how much money the government will waste.

The Muser at Great Reality:

How Big Is A Trillion?

If my grandchildren were to ask me that question, I’d have a hard time answering them. It’s not that I don’t know the numbers. After all, I got A’s in Calculus when I was in college. A trillion is 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000. But the number is meaningless to me. I’ve never experienced anything that can tell me how big it is. I certainly can’t imagine what a trillion dollars is worth.

About the biggest amount of money I can visualize is $100,000. I know what a $100,000 house looks like. I’ve seen lots of them. And, I suppose I can comprehend a million dollars. If I picture a city block with ten houses, each worth $100,000, that’s a million dollars.

So how many blocks would I have to fill with these $100,000 houses to make a trillion dollars. Would it be the whole neighborhood? The city? More?

If someone built block after block of $100,000 houses, ten houses to a block, ten blocks to a mile—that’s a hundred blocks per square mile—how big would the project be when it reached a trillion dollars in value? It would be 10,000 square miles—that’s bigger than the State of Maryland.

And how about the size of the national debt? How much land would we have to cover with $100,000 houses to equal the $7 trillion debt? Picture Missouri. The 275 miles from St. Louis to Kansas City—covered with houses. The 325 miles from the Arkansas line to the Iowa line—covered with houses. All the farms, all the lakes, all the rivers—covered with $100,000 houses. That’s what 7 trillion dollars looks like.

I still can’t comprehend it.