Obama's Debt

The Business Insider has 34 facts about the debt.

Yahoo Finance has 12 scary facts.

A friend of mine likens the debt to having a broken sewer pipe in the basement.  His analogy goes something like this.

Say your sewer pipe breaks in the basement and your house fills up with waste.  You have two options:  You can raise the roof or you can fix the pipes.  Which would you do?

I think some opponents of the debt measures think that the national debt was incurred because of wasteful government spending.  I don't think all government spending is wasteful.  Senator Tom Colburn, has a list of 100 wasteful government projects.  This excerpt is from the Chicago Tribune.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) compiled a list of what he deemed as the biggest wastes of taxpayer money in 2010. The list includes nearly a million dollars for poetry readings at zoos, $1.5 million for a museum in North Carolina honoring banjo picker Earl Suggs, and $442,340 to study male prostitutes in Vietnam.

I believe that government spending is subject to crowding out and fiscal policy really doesn't work. But I also believe that as a whole, the United States is a benevolent country who cares about all people.  So the United States intervenes on behalf of rights around the world, comes the rescue in natural disasters, and has entitlement programs.  Maybe the United States is like Thidwick, the Big Hearted Moose.  We just have to get rid of some of the free riders.