My Letter to Congress: H.R.910 Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011

I am writing as your constituent in the 2nd Congressional district of Arizona. I support H.R.910 - Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, and am tracking it using OpenCongress.org, the free public resource website for government transparency and accountability.

Sincerely,
Barbara Carpenter

$15 Trillion -- Our National Debt, In Pictures

Yesterday, the national debt crossed the $15 trillion mark. Many
in Washington, D.C. have gotten accustomed to throwing such large
numbers around, sometimes seemingly forgetting that those nearly
incomprehensible numbers represent real money. The below pictures
put into perspective just how much money $15 trillion really is.

For some perspective, here is a single $100 bill:


This is what $10,000 in $100 bills looks like:

$1 Million:

$100 Million (with $1 Million and $10,000 next to it, for size
comparison), which fits on a standard shipping pallet:

$1 Billion (You would have to stack the ten pallets pictured FOUR
times to equal the amount the United States goes further into
debt every single day -- recall that these stacks are made up not
of $1 bills, but of individual $100 bills):

This is what $1 Trillion looks like. Note that the pallets in the
pictures are stacked two-deep. President Obama has added MORE
than $1 trillion to the national debt EVERY year he has been in
office. He has singlehandedly added about four times this amount
to our debt. His failed, so-called "stimulus" bill cost nearly $1
trillion, by itself:

Another perspective on $1 trillion. To put this amount into
perspective, if one were to spend $1 MILLION every day from the
time Christ was born until today, he still would not have spent a
full $1 trillion (nor would he have even spent enough to pay for
the aforementioned failed stimulus bill):

Finally, this is $15 trillion -- the amount the United States is
in debt, as of today. The pallets are now stacked about thirty
deep on an area the size of a regulation football field. The
original pallet of $100 Million can be seen pictured in front of
the semi-truck.

$114.5 Trillion - This picture represents the United States'
"unfunded liabilities." This is the total amount of money the
United States knows it owes, but cannot pay. Money owed to
services like Medicare and Social Security that the government
knows it does not have enough money to fully fund. Since this
picture was made, our unfunded liabilities have actually
increased by about $2 trillion:

Now, for some perspective, a little reminder of how we got here.
Below is a video of House Democrats in 2010 standing and cheering
as the debt ceiling was raised by nearly $2 trillion. In other
words, we maxed out our credit cards and, instead of cutting
spending, we just raised our credit limit to allow ourselves to
spend even more.

Many of these same big spenders stand in strident opposition to
the only solution that will control what is currently a looming
financial disaster: cutting spending, capping future spending,
and adding a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The House will be voting tomorrow on a Balanced Budget Amendment
and, as I always have, I will be voting in favor of it, and I
encourage my colleagues to do the same.
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