Federal Debt Nears $16 Trillion, With No Easy Way to Pay It Down
In the time it takes you to read this story, the U.S. debt will have grown by about $4.4. million.
The debt is now lurking just under the $16 trillion mark — a number huge enough to be almost incomprehensible to the layperson. One way to visualize its magnitude: If you were to spend a dollar every second, it would take you 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion, or a mere one-16th of the debt.
“The national debt is certainly a ticking time bomb. There’s no question that if we don’t do something about it, it’s going to go off,” says Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition.
Bixby, like most economists, thinks there comes a point when the debt becomes unsustainable — when interest payments on the debt alone create an economic implosion.
“We’re spending about $200 billion on interest now. That’s much more than we’re spending on operations in Afghanistan, more than we’re spending on Medicaid,” he said.
Compounding the problem are the baby boomers. The first of the tidal wave of Americans born in the post-World War II years are now retiring. Many of them have had their retirement savings diminished by the bursting of the housing bubble and the subsequent recession. More than ever, they’re counting on government entitlements in their senior years.