Hello? What About The $36 Trillion Tab?

America's balance sheet is about to get worse and Republicans don't care

"Debt is the slavery of the free." - Publilius Syrus

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When America’s debt hit $1 trillion in 1980, my conservative political science professor freaked out in front of the whole class.

He had this way of ranting in a staccato German accent that left me hanging on his every word: “Do you know how much that is? … America can not pay that back.”

It was an incomprehensible number for someone who did not study astrophysics. It was one million million and it had taken since 1789 to rack up such a monumental tab.

In 2010, I met two more characters who were deeply disturbed after this debt had eclipsed $13 trillion following the 2008 financial crisis.

Erskine Bowles, who had served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, and former Republican U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, had been appointed co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

That’s what you do with an intractable problem. You appoint a committee. A bi-partisan committee – yeah, that will do it.

In 2013 – about $3 trillion later – I ran into Bowles again . After being completely ignored, he and Simpson were freelancing an initiative they called the “Campaign to Fix the Debt.”

“We face the most predictable economic crisis in history,” Bowles warned.

But I just kept watching the U.S. debt clock tick.

Today, it’s approaching $36 trillion, and we’ve just elected a man to the White House who has never shown an inkling of restraint.

Maybe we can just print more money, like Zimbabwe. (Photo Credit: (Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, via Wikimedia Commons.)

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