Remember a couple of months ago when I was talking about the incomprehensibility of a trillion dollars? Well I just got a press release from a guy named Don Brunell, who is the president of the Association of Washington Businesses. The headline read, “America’s Federal Debt is Beyond Comprehension.” You’ll never guess how much that debt is, and even if you did guess right, it wouldn’t mean much. Try $53 trillion. That’s how much the Government Accountability Office claims it will take to make good on the promise made to all the folks who will be retiring over the next decade and a half, for their retirement and health care costs, plus a few other incidental debts the government has racked up.

One thing that may help put that number into perspective is that when you’re dealing in trillions, rounding up or down one hundredth of a percent is worth billions. With a couple hundredths of a percent, you could build Black Rock Reservoir and operate it for a hundred years and no one would ever miss the money.
 
Now, I will be the first to admit that I have not personally seen the government’s books. I’m taking the word of the GAO. I also have to say I’m as leery as the next guy about an organization with a name as oxymoronic as “Government Accountability.” I’ll concede it’s entirely possible that the real debt may not be $53 trillion. But almost certainly, if anything, the GAO would be understating the amount. My guess is it’s more than likely not less than $53 trillion.

And as incomprehensible as $53 trillion is, what’s even more incomprehensible is that no one is beating down the doors in the Halls of Power to ask what the heck the people that work there, and who, incidentally are responsible for spending lots of those trillions, are  going to do about it. Maybe a good time to ask would have been when Congress was discussing the $300 billion bailout for people who didn’t have enough sense not to buy a house they couldn’t afford. 

The former Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker, has calculated that paying off the debt will put the average household in America in hock to the tune of $455,000. I tried to check his figures on the calculator on my computer, but it couldn’t deal with all those zeroes. No doubt, since he had to regularly deal with all those federal budget numbers, he has a better calculator than I do, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, too.

I won’t, however, give it to the people who are supposed to be keeping tabs on Congress, and particularly the people who are covering the presidential election campaign. It just seems to me that all the candidates should have the opportunity to fill us in on where they think that $53 trill is going to come from. Surely that’s a tad more important than whose unmarried teenage daughter is expecting or what the college grades of one of the candidates were.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s probably unlikely that asking the question would get any satisfactory answers. For one thing, the only real solution is to cut benefits drastically or raise taxes drastically, and those are words that few politicians have in their vocabulary, at least when a television camera and a microphone are pointed at them. But I’d still like to hear the question asked, if only to watch whomever was asked squirm a little. I figure that’s small price to pay for going $53 trillion over budget.