Crying "Debt my people go..."

Rep. Ron Paul's latest "Straight Talk" column is just in time for that great American event: April 15th. Paul is one of the few left whose voting record shows he means what he says about governing the way the Founders intended.

We're about to have a $2.7 trillion federal budget for 2007. Most people can't fathom that kind of number, much less the even larger amount our nation is currently in debt. Here's a primer to help with that problem:

The US Treasury has a hair under $8.4 trillion in outstanding debt. Did you know that if you deposited one million dollars into a bank account every day, starting 2006 years ago, that you would still not even have ONE trillion dollars in that account? If you deposit one million dollars into a bank account every day it would take 23,000 years to accumulate $8.4 trillion dollars.

Perhaps a trillion is just too big a number to comprehend, so let's think about billions. During the past six months, the US government's debt increased by $456 billion. On an annualized basis that is $912 billion. The US government's debt increases at the rate of $2.5 billion per day, including weekends. How much is a billion? A billion seconds ago it was 1974 and one billion minutes ago Jesus may still have been alive. Next time someone tosses the word "billion" or "trillion" around casually you should ask if they actually know how much it is.

Who says country music isn't relevant today? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Travis Tritt:

Well I'm swimmin' in debt, and the money's all gone
I ain't got nothin' I can call my own
Work my fingers to the blood and bone
For a big disappointment when my paycheck comes
If I only had a little I could do just fine
I could put a down payment on some peace of mind
But I'm hangin' at the end of a credit line
Lord I'm just livin' on borrowed time