By Michael Snyder (The American Dream)

The U.S. national debt is 36 times larger than it was just 40 years ago.  That is not a misprint.  That is actually the truth.  We are literally destroying the future of America, but most Americans don’t really seem to care.  In fact, the most hated politicians in America are the Tea Party politicians that recently tried to take a stand against the out of control borrowing that the federal government has been doing.  Pew Research has just released a new survey that shows that the popularity of the Tea Party is at an all-time low.  So while many Americans may say that they theoretically want something to be done about the national debt, when push comes to shove they don’t actually mean that.  You see, the reality of the matter is that about 128 million Americans get money from the federal government every month.  That accounts for the majority of all government spending.  Anyone who tries to take those goodies away is going to be hated.  So we are going to continue down this crazy path until the system completely crashes someday.

The “deal” that was just made in Congress does nothing to reduce our spending or control the growth of our debt.  It just kicks the decisions about government spending and the debt ceiling down the road for a few months.

In fact, the agreement on the debt ceiling did not actually place any limits on how much the federal government can borrow over the next few months.  It just temporarily suspended enforcement of the debt ceiling.  So the federal government could technically go out and borrow trillions of dollars during the next few months and nobody could do anything about it.

Let’s hope that does not happen.

And of course the “debt deal” contained all kinds of pork that will benefit certain politicians that were instrumental in putting together the deal.

When are the American people finally going to get sick and tired of this kind of thing?

Meanwhile, our debt problem continues to get even worse.  The following are 33 stats that prove that SOMETHING desperately needs to be done about the national debt…

#1 The U.S. national debt is on pace to more than double during Obama’s eight years in the White House.  In other words, under Barack Obama the United States will accumulate more debt than it did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.

#2 During fiscal year 2013, the U.S. Treasury paid off $7,546,726,000,000 in maturing U.S. government debt and issued $8,323,949,000,000 in new debt.  In fiscal year 2014 those numbers will be even larger.

#3 In September, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 1.981 percent.  In January 2000, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 6.620 percent.  If we got back to that level today, it would collapse our entire financial system.

#4 Between 2008 and 2012, the ratio of government debt to government income increased from 4.0 to 6.6.

#5 Between 2008 and 2012, U.S. government debt grew by 60.7 percent, but U.S. GDP only grew by a total of about 8.5 percent during that entire time period.

#6 Since 2007, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio has increased from 66.6 percent to101.6 percent.

#7 A revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” projects that U.S. government debt will rise to about 400 percent of GDP by the year 2050.

#8 At this point, the federal government hands out money to approximately 128 million Americans every single month.  In case you were wondering, that is about 41.3 percent of the population of the entire country.

#9 Back in 1980, the U.S. national debt was less than one trillion dollars.  Today, it is rapidly approaching 17 trillion dollars.

#10 Since the year 2000, the size of the U.S. national debt has grown by more than 11 trillion dollars.

#11 During Barack Obama’s first four years in the White House, the amount of new debt accumulated by the federal government breaks down to approximately$50,521 for every single household in the United States.

#12 The United States already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.

#13 At this point, the United States government is responsible for about a third of all the government debt in the entire world.

#14 According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollars of our debt.

#15 The amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners is about 5 times larger than it was just a decade ago.

#16 If the federal government used GAAP accounting standards like publicly traded corporations do, the real federal budget deficit for 2011 would have been5 trillion dollars instead of 1.3 trillion dollars.

#17 As I noted recently, if the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

#18 How much money is one trillion dollars?  If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

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