What comes after trillion?

At the rate we're going, reporters covering the national debt will need to expand their vocabulary:

"If they gave out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility, President Bush would take the gold, silver and bronze," (North Dakota's Democratic Senator Kent) Conrad said. "With his eight years in office, he will have had the five highest deficits ever recorded. And the highest of those deficits is now projected to come in 2009, as he leaves office."

The White House on Monday predicted a record deficit of $490 billion for the 2009 budget year, a senior government official told CNN.

The deficit would amount to roughly 3.5 percent of the nation's $14 trillion economy.

It's also roughly 5% of ALL the national debt we've already amassed, showing yet again the flood tide of red ink continues to rise at an ever-higher rate. The administration, of course, always says "hey, we're fighting a war, so you should expect heavy spending." But that doesn't cover the Medicare drug benefit the supposedly conservative Republican regime brought into being, or a host of other tweaks and special interest favors. Wartime leadership means rallying for sacrifices if the cause is truly a necessary one. Instead of tightening their belts, Americans were told to go to the mall. Now we're looking to bail out an entire financial sector notable mostly for its reckless disregard of economic risk.

Not that the Democrats criticizing the president are any better at balancing the nation's checkbook. Yes, for all his faults, Bill Clinton's last couple of years produced a budget surplus... when there was a decisive Republican congressional majority checking his worst impulses. Then the Republicans won the electoral trifecta, and became drunken sailors with the public's money.

Like the grasshopper, we played while the sun was warm, racking up huge social program benefits that now tie our hand fiscally. The storm of lean times is now here, and we don't have anything stored up to weather it.

Fifty years ago, there was a move to establish an ultimatum that if the debt ever reached a certain point the States would dissolve the Union as an unrestrainable, bankrupt failure.

Just think, the debt is over half again as large now. With no gold standard, public outrage, or anything other than ceremonial "debt ceilings" to stop them, why should Congress do anything but spend us into oblivion?