Math to Reach $62 Trillion in Debt Requires Leaps of Logic: View

On June 6, USA Today led the paper with bad news. “The federal government’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit,” the newspaper wrote.

How so? Well, if you figure in the unfunded or underfunded commitments to Social Security participants, Medicare patients, pensions and health care for government retirees, plus retirement and disability payments for the military, the government’s debt increased by $5.3 trillion in 2010. The future debt was $62 trillion as of Jan. 1, 2011, the newspaper calculated. That’s more than four times the official debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion that Democrats and Republicans are quarreling about. And because the government must come to us -- the citizenry -- for money, that works out to over half a million dollars owed by every household in the country.