When discussing the national fiscal situation, it is easy to get lost in staggeringly large numbers, numbers that are so consistently large that eventually, they begin to blur together, leaving observers in a sort of fiscal shock wherein spending and debt amounts cease to be real or tangible and are instead almost imaginary.

Every now and then, though, pieces of information come through that shine a different light upon the situation and make the grave situation clearer.

In his recent article on the National Review Online, Kevin D. Williamson points out one number to keep in mind.

763 Billion Dollars

What is the relevance of this number, which is approximately 16,470,232 times the average US family income?

Williamson explains:

If enacted, Barack Obama’s latest budget would mean that in just ten years, interest payments alone on the national debt would begin pushing the trillion-dollar mark: $763 billion a year by 2023. That may be a rosy estimate: It assumes that interest rates, currently near historic lows, do not rise a great deal over the next ten years as the Treasury continues to pile up new debt. If interest rates do climb a bit higher — not even to their historical average, but higher than they have been of late — then those interest payments easily could be more than $1 trillion a year.

That’s right. The national debt has ballooned to such proportions that its interest payments alone could soon total more than $1 trillion a year.

The following CBO chart stopping in 2011, shows the current situation, hardly ideal now, and certainly looking to get worse.

Sometimes, it’s easy to get lost in the numbers. Rows of zeroes, and charts that don’t seem to affect our daily lives. Calculations that seem beyond our reach, and leaders that surely know what they’re doing, right?

And sometimes, a little bit of information comes along that brings back down to earth how fantastically absurd our financial situation is, and how out of touch spending-happy leaders truly are.

One doesn’t have to be an economist, mathematician, or politician to see this absurdity. Our nation simply cannot withstand much more on this track. It is time for leaders committed to striking at the root of this problem by pledging to Reject the Debt, and time for citizens who will remain vigilant to holding them to their promises.

We absolutely can and will right the fiscal ship, but sometimes it takes a little wake-up call to remind us of the gravity of doing so.

The following is a guest post from Jett Johnson of the Institute to Reduce Spending:

The recent budget proposal released by President Obama has been criticized by many on the Right as continuing down the path that sequestration has laid out for our nation’s defenses. His 2014 proposal accounts for $526.6 billion in Pentagon spending, roughly a billion dollars less than the 2013 enacted budget. But while the President’s request does indeed make a few significant cuts in the Pentagon’s budget, the vast majority of programs will see their funding tick upward in accordance with an increasing baseline.

Although the language in the President’s budget leaves much to the imagination with very broad descriptions of where cuts could occur, it does attempt to make a few specific recommendations.

Learn More >>

Most voters don’t want their taxes increased. Some are fine with tax increases for others, but generally speaking, one of the Republican Party’s strong points with the electorate has been their stance against taxes. That’s all well and good, but increasingly less relevant amidst bipartisan deficit spending that has led to a nearly $17 trillion national debt with an exponential growth rate big enough to swallow the nation whole.

This is why it’s puzzling that politicians today who claim to be for limited government seem to think that a strong stance against tax increases is all they need to earn the “fiscal conservative” label. Policy wise, nothing could be further from the truth. As Jonathan Bydlak and I explained in an op-ed that was published at Real Clear Policy last December, Milton Friedman reminded us that spending is, in fact, taxation. As Friedman said:

“Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax … If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should keep your eye on is what government spends, and the real problem is to hold down government spending as a fraction of our income, and if you do that, you can stop worrying about the debt.”

If spending is taxation, it follows that deficit spending is an even more pernicious form. This is the case, because deficit spending pushes the negative economic impact of taxation to the future, causing harm to people who received no benefit from the service rendered.

This is why politicians who tell voters they’re working to limit government and sign only a pledge promising they won’t raise taxes are merely fighting half the battle. Sure, that’s a great commitment to make if you’re running as a fiscal conservative, and it’s something that shouldn’t be overlooked. But the simple fact is that a refusal to raise taxes hasn’t starved the beast – it’s arguably made it fatter. A federal beast that gorges on a diet of deficit spending is given a greater chance to grow than one who subsists on taxes, because the impact of the debt that accrues isn’t immediately felt the way taxation is. This is why deficit spending is far more politically popular – and why Republicans engage in it constantly while using the “but at least I didn’t raise taxes” excuse. Except ultimately, they did.

A perfect example of the contrast between Republican politicians on this issue can be seen in the special election for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. A runoff between Mark Sanford and Curtis Bostic will be held on April 2nd. Both Mr. Sanford and Mr. Bostic have made a promise to their constituents not to raise taxes by signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which is administered by Americans For Tax Reform. However, only Sanford has signed the Coalition’s Reject the Debt pledge, which commits candidates to consider all spending open for reduction and vote only for budgets that present a path to balance; and vote against any appropriations bill that increases total spending and against authorization or funding of new programs without offsetting cuts in other programs.

We still hope that Bostic will sign, although he’s been approached by voters concerned about the spending issue from his district on multiple occasions asking him to make this commitment, but to no avail. At the Coalition to Reduce Spending, we believe that South Carolina voters deserve to rest assured that both Mr. Bostic and Mr. Sanford will be held accountable for their spending related votes in the event that one of them is elected to Congress. So far, they haven’t been given that assurance from Curtis Bostic.