Something to say about..."Debt"

The current interest payment on our National Debt is $800,000,000,000 (that's $800 billion OR eight-hundred thousand MILLION dollars per year...and COMPOUNDING all the time). That's almost $1 Trillion annually! How much is $1 Trillion?

So, in a Presidential Debate when John McCain touts the fact that he saved $2 billion dollars over the course of two years by cutting a bomber program...I want to throw my shoe through the TV! Especially considering that our deficit rose by 4.2 billion dollars in that one day! That's four thousand two hundred MILLION dollars. A day. Everyday. And compounding. When Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "tout" a "deal" to cut $38.5 billion in federal spending through the end of this year (while the debt rose $54.1 billion in the 8 days they argued about it) I want to hit them with my 2nd Grade math book! And finally, when President Obama gets up in the State of the Union address and says, "the American people can overcome any challenge," I wonder--and worry--for the first time in my life, if we've met our match. It's our toughest enemy yet. And we are in a battle for our very way of life. Our adversary has a name: Compound Interest.

"Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment; it never works on reduced hours; it never has short crops nor droughts; it never pays taxes; it buys no food; it wears no clothes; it is unhoused and without home and so has no repairs, no replacements, no shingling, plumbing, painting, or white-washing; it has neither wife, children, father, mother, nor kinfolk to watch over and care for; it has no expense of living; it has neither weddings nor births nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you" --J. Reuben Clark Jr.