Compare U.S. budget to a typical family’s

Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we’ll illustrate the breakdown of 2011 federal budget in simple terms:

U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000

Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000

New debt: $1,650,000,000,000

National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000 (about 1% of the budget)

It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Let’s remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is a household budget for the fictitious Jones family.

Total annual income: $21,700

Amount the Joneses spent: $38,200

Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500

Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

Amount cut from the budget: $385

So in effect last month, Congress, or in this example the Jones family, sat down at the kitchen table and agreed to cut $385 from its annual budget. What family would only cut $385 of spending in order to help solve $16,500 in deficit spending? It is a start, but hardly a solution.

Now after years of this, the Jones family has $142,710 on its credit card. You would think the Jones family would recognize and address this situation. Congress doesn’t. The root of the debt problem is that the voters typically send candidates there to bring home the bacon to their own home state.

It is hard (but not impossible) to reverse this trend and tell government to stop borrowing money from future generations by spending too much now. What we have in effect is a reverse mortgage on our country. The voters have become addicted to the money, are still in the denial stage, and don’t want to face the possibility of cutting back on all of the many benefits they have come to enjoy.

Bob Vogt

Buffalo Grove