Fun with Deficit Numbers

Each second in October the federal debt could pay for a new Corvette Z06. That's enough Corvettes to stretch from New York to Shanghai.

Each minute the deficit grows by $3.95 million, the equivalent of buying a new MRI machine, and funding the professionals needed to maintain and operate it 24/7 for an entire year. That's over forty-four thousand new MRI clinics worldwide, in one month.

Each hour, for a cool $237.1 million, the taxpayers could afford fifty-five brand new M1-A Abrams main battle tanks. So that's forty-one thousand tanks in October, as compared to the entire WWII US war production of forty-seven thousand Sherman tanks. That would be a real stimulus package.

Each day we sink a further $5.7 billion in debt. Those same dollars could construct, equip and staff four large research and teaching hospitals. Would we even need socialized healthcare if this country built a hundred and twenty-four new, fully staffed hospitals in October?

What does $176.4 billion really mean to the working taxpayer? Well, each household's share of the Federal debt is increasing by $49 a day.

Our deficit spending is out of control, and Congress is attempting to spend even more on socialized healthcare and other political payoffs to special interests. The irrationality of adding to this debt goes beyond political ideology and enters the realm of fiscal insanity and malicious intentions.

Lee DeCovnick is a retired engineer and did the math and fact checking himself for this piece.