May 12, 2003 - Your balance sheet does not show it but you owe the government $22, 256.00 plus accumulating interest. So does your spouse. So does each one of your kids. That is the amount of each American man, woman and child’s share of the national debt. That is not an imaginary figure. It represents that amount of taxes that will have to be paid in the future to pay off the national debt as it exists today.

Like a family with all of its credit cards maxed out the government reached its credit limit of 6.4 trillion dollars on February 20, 2003. Since then it has been shifting money from Federal Workers’ pension funds to meet its bills like a family tapping into its retirement savings and 401Ks. On May 15th those funds too will be tapped out and the Bush Administration will be out of maneuvering room. It doesn’t seem to be the time for the family breadwinners to cut back the family paycheck by taking only part time employment. That it the equivalent of what the President Bush is trying to do when he demands a 750 billion dollar reduction in Federal income while meeting the increased spending demanded by the Second Iraqi War and Occupation and the Department of Homeland Security. How does he propose that we meet those demands on the family bank account? Easy, just get another credit card.

The Bush Budget calls for the 6.4 trillion dollar debt to grow to 9.4 trillion dollars by the end of 2007 making your share about $33,000. Right now, even as the House passed the 550 billion dollar tax cut package that the President says is not big enough, he is asking the Congress to raise the credit limit by 980 billion dollars. When the entire national debt topped 1 trillion dollars for the first time in 1981 President Reagan told us that it was the equivalent of a stack of 1000 dollar bills that was 67 miles high. That stack of 1000 dollar bills is 6.4 times higher today. An orbiting space shuttle would have to detour around it.

Who do we owe the money to? American private investors hold 3.7 trillion of the debt. Another 2.7 trillion is in IOUs due to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds that are used to hide the real operating deficit. The rest is borrowed from foreign investors. We can’t simply stop paying on the debt just as a family can’t stop paying on its mortgage and car loans. If we default the resulting collapse will make the Great Depression look like boom times. Even in the darkest days of the 1930s America paid its bills.

We have reached the check out lane and the Cashier’s question is, “Paper or Plastic”. Are we going to pay with real money or add to the debt? The President’s response is to ask, “Where do I sign?”