National debt needs our attention now

The $16 trillion national debt is the most important issue of our time. It is difficult to relate to such a big number, so let’s use $1 million per day to see how long it takes to reach just $1 trillion. Beginning with Christ’s birth as day one and incurring $1 million per day through 2012 we get to $735 billion. We have to go another 726 years to year 2738 to reach $1 trillion.

Over the past four years the debt grew $5.3 trillion. This converts to $3.6 billion per day, $150 million per hour and $2.5 million per minute.

We need fewer politicians and more statesmen in Washington. Some have outsourced their legislative duties to lobbyists by signing the no-tax Norquist pledge, and the dialogue on “tax the rich” is misleading. One party is wrong for pushing it to score political points, and the other is just as wrong for fighting against it. It simply does not solve the problem. It should be implemented just to get it off the table and move on. Without knowing specific proposals, we do know that $25 billion in new taxes covers seven days of the growing debt. What we need is action to solve the other 350 days or $1.2 trillion of new debt each year by cutting government expenses and growing the economy.

We cannot overlook the China connection. There is a revolving door of moving dollars first to China to pay for all the “made in China” stuff we buy. This gives them the dollars to send back when they buy our bonds to fund our debt. And we in turn send dollars back to China by paying interest on those bonds.

We need new direction to preserve the economic future for our grandchildren.

LeRoy Kunkel

Palatine