With all of the bailout and deficit spending talk during the Presidential election, American voters became (painfully) aware of the debt the U.S. owes to other countries.China was mentioned several times during the debates and currently the U.S. owes them a cool $541 billion. Certainly not good on the surface

Want a sure “sign” our National Debt is out of control? How about the fact we have outgrown the sign itself and run out of digits?

The Times Square sign was originally put up by Manhattan developer Seymour Durst in 1989 to draw attention to the growing debt. The amount then? $2.7 trillion.

As we have now surpassed $10 trillion, the “$” had to be changed to a “1.” They plan on updating the sign next year to add two more digits.

At the rate we are going, are you sure we only need to add two more digits?

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Ever wonder when you hear the government spending “billions” of dollars how we can ever keep that number in perspective before we rubber stamp the approval? 

Here are some things that should help us realize how much a billion really is… 

• If you were to stack $1,000 bills on top of each other until they total $1 billion, the stack would be 65 miles high. (Keep in mind planes fly around 6 miles high). 

• One billion minutes is about 1900 years - One billion minutes ago the Roman Empire ruled. 

• One billion months is 82 million years - Dinosaurs ruled.

 Now that we have established that, here is the good part…

 Washington spends an estimated $1.45 billion per day. 

The U.S. National Debt (as I write this) is approx. $9,389,090,987,915.92 (yes, that is the “Trillion” category) 

U.S. Population is approx. 304,197,093 

So each citizen’s share of this debt is $30,865.16 

Vote Carefully… 

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