The recent passage of a $1.1 trillion omnibus bill now sets the stage for the looming battle over raising the national debt (again).
The national debt is now over $17 trillion (which looks like $17,000,000,000,000), and growing. The passage of the recent omnibus signals yet another failure of our Congress to set and implement a responsible fiscal policy, and the executive to timely provide its reasonable operating expenses for the coming fiscal year.
“Omnibus” now has taken on a new meaning: a Congressional term for hiding wasteful spending in plain sight and in fine print in a bill too big to read overnight.
Not too long ago, both chambers of Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011. Passing with large majorities in both chambers of Congress, those that voted for it, including the President, touted it as an effective mechanism to impose real fiscal responsibility amidst the gridlock.
The promise of fiscal responsibility began to slip when the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (aka “super committee”) failed to submit any proposed legislation to Congress. Had they done so, spending cuts would have been uniformly imposed across the entire government.
Instead, mandatory spending cuts were imposed on the Department of Defense in a process known as “sequestration.” Those that initially voted for it, and sang their praises for being good fiscal stewards, quickly became critics of it.
Note the predictable irony that many who voted for it, including the President, tried to deflect attention from their earlier support. I’m sure they all breathed a sigh of relief as the recent Omnibus bill made “sequestration” yet another historical footnote in our ongoing legislative history.
Now, any glimmer of hope for fiscal responsibility that would have been imposed by the “sequester” was dashed by the recent spending bill, and I expect more back-pedaling as we move forward to the debate on the debt ceiling.
I think the biggest issue in the debt ceiling debate is not the political posturing and drama, but getting an idea of the size of the national debt. See if this helps you understand just how big is the national debt.
Think of the national debt not as dollars but miles.
The sun sits at the center of our solar system, and is zero dollar. The earth is $93 million dollars away (93,000,000). Saturn is $1 billion dollars away (1,000,000,000). Pluto, our outermost planet, is $5.9 billion dollars away (5,900,000,000). You then leave our solar system and into intergalactic space and head to our closest neighbor, Proxima Centauri.
Proxima Centauri is approximately 4.2 light years away from our sun. A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles, which would be 5 trillion, 865 billion, 696 million dollars in our example.
If our national debt were miles, it would be nearly four light years long, or most of the distance to the closest star in our galaxy, Proxima Centauri.
Robert S. Black
Peachtree City, Ga.
