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.
“We’re facing this avalanche of seniors moving into Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. So federal expenditures driven by Medicare and Medicaid are going to go up faster than the economy can grow,” Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said.
Rivlin thinks the demographic and fiscal storm clouds that once seemed distant are moving closer.
“We don’t need to make up scenarios. We’re seeing them in Europe even as we speak,” she said. “Countries like Greece, but much stronger economies than Greece — Italy, Spain, to some extent France — are finding that their debt has risen to a point that they can’t borrow at reasonable interest rates.”
This week, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf warned that the fiscal cliff, or “Taxmageddon” as some have termed it, may spark another recession.
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