Shrinking deficit, not debt

From Freep.com

At least he’s acknowledging it as a problem, but President Barack Obama is only addressing part of it when he says he plans to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term. What he’s not saying — and I probably wouldn’t either — is that this means the national debt will keep growing, more slowly but it won’t be going down.

Last year, our government spent $412 billion — about half the size of the stimulus package — making interest payments on the national debt. That’s roughly 10 times the annual budget from all sources for the State of Michigan. Much of that went to foreign governments who loaned us the money because American consumers remain some of the best customers for their exports. They don’t want to see the U.S. economy collapse. (Neither do we.)