Maybe the lawmakers in Congress can pick up tips from the Rockstar from Mars. Charlie Sheen doesn’t exactly epitomize responsibility, but even he knows how to live within his means.
Sheen earned about $30 million last year and spent just around half that sum, according to a new video by Bankrupting America. Congress, by comparison, brought in $2.3 trillion in taxes — but spent $3.6 trillion, one and a half times the amount received.
Thanks to the government’s virtually nonstop spending, the nation has a debt burden of $14 trillion — or $130,000 per household. With that money, American families could buy eight years’ worth of housing, 17 years of transportation or 20 years of food.
That doesn’t even begin to address interest costs. This year, the United States will pay $200 billion in interest alone. By the time Justin Bieber is old enough to rent a car, the government will pay $1 trillion in interest every year. Over the next 10 years, interest will cost the country about $50,000 per household.
Clearly, to borrow a term from Charlie Sheen, no one is “winning” in this scenario. And the biggest losers are younger Americans — the Debt-Paying Generation, which stands to suffer the most from Washington’s reckless spending spree. The 115 million Americans between the ages of 5 and 30 will marry later, have fewer children, poorer health and lower incomes — all because of the trillions in debt from government spending and entitlement programs.
