Exploding Debt
Contrary to what most people believe, the United States has had public debt since its inception. Upon ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, Congress assumed the debt from the Revolutionary War and the six years when the States were organized under the Articles of Confederation. On January 1, 1791, the national debt was reported to be just over 75 million dollars.
Over its first four decades, America's debt fluctuated but remained in the tens of millions. The Civil War and its aftermath spiked the debt from 65 million to over 2.5 billion dollars.
The debt varied over the next 50 years and again jumped because of war. After financing a good portion of World War 1, America's debt exceeded $22 billion dollars.
The Great Depression and the ensuing social programs more than doubled the debt. However, World War II really caused it to jump, with the debt exceeding 250 billion dollars.
In 1960, the debt was just under 300 billion dollars. By 1970, it had increased another 100 billion dollars and jumped another 500 billion over the next 10 years. Between 1980 and 1990, the debt more than tripled from under 1 trillion to over 3 trillion dollars.
By 2005, the debt was almost 8 trillion dollars. Three years later, the debt surpassed 9 trillion. At the rate of 1 trillion dollars of debt added every two years, the national debt is projected to be 20 trillion dollars within 20 years, forever escalating with no end in sight.
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The National Debt over Time
The debt is so large that it is hard to comprehend. If we piled 9 trillion $1 bills atop one another, the stack would go around the moon and back to Earth. If the same 9 trillion $1 bills were laid end to end along the equator, our nation's debt would encircle Earth 35,000 times.
Running a consistent deficit of 300 to 400 billion dollars per year (as we are now) projects the national debt to exceed 20 trillion dollars within 30 years. However, America will have failed long before it reaches that point.
Projected National Debt
After 50 years and over two dozen sessions of congress, should we continue to put our trust in the present two major parties to do the job? How many more elections can we afford to let them fail? Wouldn't they have been fired long ago if they were working for a corporation? Wouldn't they be serving time in prison for criminal negligence?
Unlike parents going on a binge before they check out, we are not spending our money. We are running a debt that our children and grandchildren will be obligated to pay. How can we say we love our children and grandchildren when we continue to act like drunken fools, knowing that we will surely leave them with trillions of dollars of debt.
We are not talking about the failure of Social Security or being forced to trim social services. The consequences of continuing our selfish, irresponsible, and callous behavior is no less than assured runaway inflation before total financial collapse.
The Patriot Party promises to stop the insanity. This is not an empty promise. If given the opportunity, the Patriot Party will balance the budget immediately and begin to pay down the debt.
