What's $14 trillion among friends?

By K.E. Campbell

On the last day of 2010, our national debt surpassed $14 trillion for the first time. That's 14,000 billion. It took just seven months for the debt to grow from $13 trillion to $14 trillion. During that brief span, according to Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times, the national debt increased by $54,084 per second.

The debt is rapidly approaching the statutory ceiling of $14.294 trillion set by Congress in February 2010. National Review published a piece yesterday that included a 2006 quote from Barack Obama regarding his vote against increasing the debt ceiling at that time. He said, in part, "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure...Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally..."

Below are debt levels at certain key dates during the past decade:

Date	Event	National debt

January 20, 2001	George W. Bush sworn in as president	$5,727,776,738,305

January 20, 2005	George W. Bush sworn in for 2nd term	$7,613,215,612,328

January 4, 2007	Democrats take control of House and Senate; Harry Reid sworn in as Senate majority leader; Nancy Pelosi sworn in as House Speaker; she proclaims "This 110th Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: Pay-as-you go, no new deficit spending."	$8,670,596,242,973

January 20, 2009	Barack Obama sworn in as president	$10,626,877,048,913

November 2, 2010	Election day	$13,723,974,060,859

December 31, 2010	Year end (up 61.76% since 1/4/07)	$14,025,215,218,709

With these mind-numbingly large numbers, look for more comparative rationalization by politicians, pundits and legacy media journalists along the lines of the "logic" used in this CBS News report:

The bipartisan national debt commission touts medical malpractice reform as a way to contain soaring health care costs. But even if all of these reforms were enacted the total savings would be just a tiny fraction a percent of the total national debt...

So compared to our national debt, $17 billion (that's $17,000,000,000) is peanuts, so why bother, right?

Of interest: for liberals who bemoaned the recent extension of the Bush tax rates, the U.S. Treasury has made it easy for you to help pay off the national debt, no matter your personal federal tax bill. Simply click here. You can pay by credit card or bank draft.