The debt iceberg ahead

Our exploding federal debt looms out of the ocean mists like the iceberg that ripped open the hull of the Titanic. This nations fiscal insolvency and the Titanic's maiden voyage have too many uncomfortable parallels. Captain E. J. Smith ignored seven different iceberg warnings including one warning received from the California, stopped just 19 miles from the site of the collision.  The two lookouts that fateful night didn't even have binoculars.  We cannot touch or see the Federal debt, but thanks to an opportunistic German seaman with a camera, we now have a picture of the most famous iceberg in history.

The MSM spends endless hours discussing the minutiae of the GOP candidates and the primaries, while each day this nation digs itself about $4.1 billion deeper in debt. About 29% of that shortfall results from the $1.2 billion we pay in interest each day on the $15.3 trillion debt.  

Let's be clear, the hard left socialists running the Obama Administration and their useful idiots in the MSM are using the GOP race (as they did OWS) as a carefully planned distraction, using up news cycles, to divert attention from the sluggish economy, the ongoing devastation of middle class unemployment, and the moribund housing markets. These staggeringly large numbers must not be ignored. A human sized perspective to these large numbers can help us understand how much of the accumulated wealth of a great nation is being hemorrhaged by these radical Democrats, hell-bent on the sinking our ship of state. 

So what could be purchased with $4.1 billion dollars, just one day's borrowings?

  • One half of the construction cost of a Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier. ($8.5 billion)
  • All the costs for men, supplies, planes and armaments for maintaining an active duty, Nimitz class aircraft carrier for 10 years. ($400 million a year)
  • 3,153 brand new, 110-foot ladder and pump, monster sized, fire trucks with all the options, including extra chrome trim, and custom graphics. Parked end to end, this line of new fire trucks would stretch over 19 miles. ($1.3 million each)
  • The construction costs needed to build and equip 46 three story, 55,000 square foot, state of the art, hospitals using union labor. Less expensive in a right-to-work state. That's a lot of new hospitals, for just one day's debt. ($1,600 per sqr. foot)
  • There are currently 49.4 million, K-12, public school kids in this country. In a class of 25 students, that would mean an additional $2, 075 in classroom supplies computers and teaching materials. From just one days deficit spending. With eight days of debt, we could provide an iPad or laptop to every school child in America.
  • The Toyota Camry was the best selling car in North America last year.  $4.1 billion could purchase 186,364 Toyota Camrys.  That is almost enough Camrys to park end to end from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  ($22,000 per Camry)
  • The Federal debt increases around $13.10 per day for each of the 312.9 million persons living in the United States. America could easily feed the entire population of this nation every day with those funds, and hunger could become a distant memory.

Much like Captain Smith, who ordered full speed ahead while the sea-lanes were choked with icebergs, this nation's impotent failure of political leadership has carefully cemented the deadly certainty of fiscal insolvency.

Every day, the bright red blood of our nations wealth flows into that bottomless chasm of debt. Every day the bread and circuses provided by the political elites and their enablers obfuscate the clear and immediate danger to our Constitutional Republic. Every day we edge closer to losing our freedoms, liberties and property rights, all in the name of fairness, social justice, and safety.

Every day can be the first day that we stand up and tell those who rely on our polite apathy, "Hell no, we will not go quietly into the night."

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com