While many Americans were nursing a New Year's holiday hangover the U.S. national debt crossed the $34 trillion threshold. Worse, our government's propensity for writing checks against an overdrawn bank account will add an additional one trillion dollars to that debt about every one hundred days with the debt on track to climb past the $35 trillion mark in April, 2024. In a sane world such reckless government spending would prompt a taxpayer revolt along with a nationwide demand for wholesale resignations of debtaholic politicians. Yet, America’s ballooning national debt continues to increase with few citizens calling for responsible heads to roll.

$35 trillion is a staggering, unimaginable sum of money. The majority of the citizenry understands the concepts of hundreds-of-thousands and millions because we are exposed to these values every day. Houses cost hundreds-of-thousands. Many of us can drive over to the rich section of town and look at million-dollar homes. Even the concept of a billion is easily understood by most. However, its likely very few citizens truly understand just how massive a trillion of anything is and this ignorance is partly responsible for our national debt apathy. It might help to visualize $35 trillion in a real-world setting.

Imagine converting the debt into 35 trillion one-dollar bills and then laying those bills side-by-side (like cobblestones on a road) to pave the length of an interstate highway, specifically Interstate 80 (I-80). I-80 stretches east to west across the continental U.S. for 2,900.76 miles connecting New Jersey to San Francisco. Assume an average of twelve feet per travel lane or forty-eight feet total across the four lanes of I-80 (in effect, an area 48 feet wide by 2,900.76 miles long). It takes 2,277,345 (2.277 million) one-dollar bills to "pave" one mile of these four lanes of interstate highway. To pave the entire four lanes of I-80 from coast to coast will take 6.606 billion one-dollar bills. However, 6.6 billion is only 0.00019 percent of the almost $35 trillion national debt. To display the entire debt across the length and breadth of Interstate 80 we have to stack dollars in layers. To be exact, it will take 5,298 layers of dollar bills laid atop I-80 to display the whole debt.

Said another way, if a national debt of $35 trillion was converted to one-dollar bills and used to carpet the four travel lanes of Interstate 80 from New Jersey to San Francisco the travelers on all four lanes of that highway would be driving on a 22.8 inches thick carpet of one-dollar bills. Driving on just one mile of this four-lane carpet of debt their cars would pass over $12.065 billion.

Driving at sixty miles an hour it takes about forty-eight hours of non-stop travel to make the drive across this middle America highway. Imagine driving on a 22.8-inch carpet of dollar bills the entire forty-eight hours. That, my fellow patriot, is a $35 trillion national debt portrayed in dollar bill format. (If the debt grows to $37.5 trillion as anticipated this year the highway carpet will be 24.41 inches thick by January 2025.)

The growing national debt is an overdrawn credit card our politicians have mismanaged by decades of excessive spending on nonsense projects. Additionally, these same politicians have created a separate debt of $175.3 trillion worth of IOUs in the form of Social Security and Medicare obligations. This $175.3 trillion adds a 9.5-foot layer of dollar bills to the top of our I-80 highway carpet making the total carpet of dollar debt 11.4 feet high and stretching coast-to-coast.

In Stephen King's The Green Mile the “mile” is the green linoleum flooring condemned men walk on as they are taken to an electric chair execution. America’s politicians have created greenback miles that condemn America's future and the future of our children to a similar fate. Only someone insane would create such a monstrous debt and then go on television crowing with pride about national budget agreements that pile more dollars on existing miles of waste.

America’s greenback miles of debt are our road to destruction. The next time voters drive to a polling booth its suggested they envision driving on a 11.4 foot high carpet of one-dollar bills. That thought may prompt them to vote to end the madness and fire every politician who refuses to make the tens of trillion in budget cuts that are needed to ensure a viable future for our children.

(Footnote: The computations in this article are based on the prescribed measurements of a $1 bill. These are 6.14 inches long by 2.61 inches wide. 8.986-dollar bills laid edge to edge equals one square foot; i.e., 9 bills per square foot of highway. A dollar bill is .0043 inches thick. A stack of one hundred new, crisp $1 bills from the bank is 0.43 inches thick.)

Image: J. Michael