The new budget unveiled by the White House yesterday calls for total spending of $3.8 trillion in the coming year. Of that amount, $1.6 trillion will need to be borrowed because revenues aren't expected to be enough to cover the spending.
We hear numbers like a trillion being thrown around a lot these days. We know it's a big number -- but do we really have any idea how big? Just how different is one trillion from one billion from one million? Let me see if I can help.
What were you doing one million seconds ago? One million seconds is about twelve days. That was Thursday, January 21st, 2010.
What were you doing one billion seconds ago? One billion seconds is about 32 years. That was 1978. I was a sophomore in high school. Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency at Love Canal.
What were you doing one trillion seconds ago? One trillion seconds is about 32,000 years. That was somewhere around 30,000 years before Christ.
Needless to say, a $1.6 trillion dollar budget deficit next year is really big. It's about $34,000 of debt per U.S. citizen.
That's just how much our country will borrow in the coming year. We already owe about $12 trillion from prior years. The additional $1.6 trillion will be added to that.
Will we ever pay back what we borrowed? The Bible says the borrower is the servant of the lender. We are selling ourselves into slavery.
A trillion here, a trillion there -- pretty soon it will be real money.
