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Clock ticking, money wasting

Well, it’s Monday afternoon at 4:32 and according to the U.S. National Debt Clock the country is in hock to the tune of $20,169,722,863,480.

For those of you who are comma-challenged, that’s about twenty trillion, one hundred and seventy billion dollars. And, just in the time it took us to write those two sentences, it went up over another million dollars. Perhaps we should learn to type faster.

The website that hosts the debt clock (www.usdebtclock.org/) notes:

Since there are around 320 million folks in the U.S., each one of us owes about $62,000. Of those of us unfortunate enough to be taxpayers, our share is $167,300 each. That was Monday. By the time you read this, you’ll owe more.

Since Sept. 30, 2012, the national debt has increased an average of $1.6 billion per day.

Now, just since we started writing an annual editorial about the national debt in 2013, the debt has increased by around $3.25 trillion. Back then it was a paltry $16,968,054,960.

Congress just agreed to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling, at least for another 90 days. The president and Congress are talking about possibly tackling tax reform next. Everybody is anxious to find ways to lower taxes — some want to ease the burden on businesses; others want to let the rich keep more; and still others want the middle class to get a break.

The only problem as we see it, though, is that we already don’t have enough tax revenues to pay our bills. So, we’re going to cut taxes?

Ah, well, we’re obviously in the minority. But it bothers us that each and every one of us taxpayers is $167,000 more in debt than we think we are. A credit counselor might suggest we should watch our spending.

Apparently, though, such advice doesn’t apply to governments.

* Editorials reflect the opinion of the publisher.

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