Paying the Bills

Paying the Bills

Right now republicans in congress are demanding what many are calling "drastic cuts" of 100 billion dollars from our fiscal budget before they will vote to raise the debt ceiling. That's right, our trusted political leaders have officially hit the 14 trillion dollar debt ceiling and are now trying to raise it, yet again. As someone who will probably never even see a million dollars in my lifetime, comprehending numbers in the billions and trillions is simply beyond my grasp. In order to better understand the current congressional debate, I decided it would be a prudent exercise to simplify these numbers down to ratios that I can follow.

Statistically speaking, 1 Billion dollars is to 1 Trillion dollars as 1 dollar is to 1,000 dollars. Given this, the current budget debate could be broken down as follows: We have a $1,500 yearly deficit and $14,000 in debt. What our DRASTIC republicans are proposing is a budget cut of $100 a year. This means that instead of adding $1,500 to the debt, we would add a mere $1,400.

Given this breakdown, these oh-so-drastic budget cuts seem somewhat underwhelming. When our debt is over 90% of GDP, a percentage that by even the most liberal economist is considered unsustainable, and our daily interest is 4 billion dollars, cutting 1/15th of our deficit, is not enough and is certainly not "drastic". Washington, come on, can you not do simple math or are you just hoping that we can't?