The US has been in Debt for a long time with interest payments and budget deficits!

The interest on the United States debt is an unstoppable time bomb.  Currently the United States is the largest debtor nation!  To see some of the other debtor countries go to the CIA World Fact Book website.  The US federal government has always been in debt, except during the presidency of Andrew Jackson.  In 1835 he reduced the federal debt to $33,733.05, and is said to be the only US President to have paid off the national debt.  Things changed in 1837 when a depression caused a tenfold increase in debt that lasted until 1844.

The current fiscal year ends Sept. 30, 2011 with a deficit of more than $1.26 trillion, and is reported as being the largest shortfall since the end of World War II.  The Obama administration has just released its 2012 budget projections.

I wonder how many Americans realize that the US Constitution does not require congress to have a balanced budget.   We have a Fiscal Commission that is charged with balancing the budget excluding interest payments by the year 2015 (you need to rotate the summary tables, I think these are the same tables that Paul Ryan is currently using to question Tim Geithner).  While our states have a constitutional requirement to balance their budgets,  we keep the federal government open with continuing resolutions, that have the likely potential to increase our debt position.  An amendment is needed for the federal government to balance the budget.  See if your state was in the 2010 top debt position.

In 1936, Congress was first presented with a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) by Republican representative Harold Knutson of Minnesota, but it died in the Judiciary Committee.

Over 70 years later we still don't have one. Some members of Congress are trying to get a Balanced Budget Amendment passed. Lets hope they have the political stamina to make change happen. In the U.S. House of Representatives Robert Goodlatte, along with a group of his colleagues have sponsored a bill  to adopt a Balanced Budget Amendment  to the U.S. Constitution.  Goodlatte also sponsored the amendment in 2007 and 2009. 

Long time politician U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has sponsored the Balanced Budget Amendment  4 times and co-sponsored it 13 times in his 34 year career.  U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, is also a co-sponsor of the current Balanced Budget Amendment.

The amendment would prohibit federal spending from exceeding revenues except in those circumstances of a war declared by Congress.  Approval of the amendment would require two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress, and ratification by at least three-fourths of the states.

The reality is that the government debt comes from years of spending more money than it has received.  The last time the US had a balanced budget was in 1957. 

The debt level is expressed as a percent of the country's total production, or gross domestic product (GDP), which was $14.7 trillion in the third quarter of 2010.

The current debt of $14.7 trillion is 95% of gross domestic product, that's up 51% since 1988.  The GDP is defined as the total value of all of a country's goods and services that were produced in a year.  It's the number used to put a size on the economy.

Even before the economic crisis, the U.S. debt grew 50% between 2000-2007, ballooning from $6-$9 trillion. The $700 billion dollar bailout helped the debt grow to $10.5 trillion by December 2008.

Two-thirds of the public debt is owned by the people, businesses, and foreign governments who bought treasury bills, notes, and bonds.  Purchasers of Treasury bills expect the U.S. economy to recover enough to pay them back. The U.S. is such a large customer for foreign investors like China and Japan, it is allowed to run a huge tab so it will keep buying exports.

Debt is a form of bondage, and we should use extreme caution when borrowing money.  It's time to balance the federal budget as well as reduce the interest payments on our debt!