The followoing is an excerpt from an AP piece that helps shed some light on the relationship between the recently passed stimulus bills and their effects on the national debt.One thing about the president's $790 billion stimulus package is certain: It will jack up the federal debt.
Whether or not it succeeds in producing jobs and taming the recession, tomorrow's taxpayers will end up footing the bill.
Forecasters expect the 2009 deficit -- for the budget year that began last Oct 1 -- to hit $1.6 trillion including new stimulus and bank-bailout spending. That's about three times last year's shortfall.
The torrents of red ink are being fed by rising federal spending and falling tax revenues from hard-hit businesses and individuals.
The national debt -- the sum of all annual budget deficits -- stands at $10.7 trillion. Or about $36,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.
Interest payments alone on the national debt will near $500 billion this year. It's already the fourth-largest federal expenditure, after Medicare-Medicaid, Social Security and defense.
This will affect us all directly for years, as well as our children and possibly grandchildren, in higher taxes and probably reduced government services. It will also force continued government borrowing, increasingly from China, Japan, Britain, Saudi Arabia and other foreign creditors.
(for the full article see http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/14/raw-data-stimulus-gets/)
The scary part of all this expanded government spending is that it seems to fundamentally mirror a mentality that we became all too familiar with prior to the mortgage debaucle.
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