U.S. debt hits $13 trillion!

After the United States won the American Revolution and independence, the U.S. national debt was $75 million.

At the beginning of the War Between the States, the U.S. national debt was just $65 million.

The debt passed $1 billion for the first time in 1863 -- the year of the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. The U.S. debt rose to $2.7 billion by the end of the war.

The national debt hit $22 billion to pay for World War I.

By the end of World War II, the national debt had skyrocketed to nearly $260 billion.

Since then, the debt has risen by many trillions of dollars.

Now, in 2010, our national debt has shot up to a staggering $13 trillion!

That's $13 with 000,000,000,000 after it.

Congress from time to time has enacted "debt ceilings," ostensibly to curb spending and limit the national debt. But each time a "ceiling" has been approached, a new and higher "ceiling" has been voted. So there really has been no effective limit on the national debt. And thus there has been no limit on the interest that taxpayers must pay each year on the debt.

The national debt today amounts to $42,026 per citizen.

Just paying the interest on the national debt -- not reducing the debt -- costs $2,211 per citizen in taxes each year.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, under whom the debt began to rise dramatically, used to say smilingly, "We only owe it to ourselves." Well, we're paying interest on it in taxes, while the debt is rising about $1.5 trillion a year.

Few lawmakers seriously insist that we "pay as we go," or that we stop increasing the debt. There certainly is no real plan to reduce the debt. Instead, there are constant proposals by the president and Congress to continue to increase the debt.

Is that fiscal responsibility? Is our debt something we want to pass on to our beloved children and grandchildren, and many additional generations to come? Is that "good citizenship"?

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