“Sometime in the next week or so, the U.S. national debt will exceed $13.4 trillion.”

UGH!!!!

“Traditionally, federal spending has run around 21 percent of GDP. But George W. Bush and (even more dramatically) Barack Obama have now driven federal spending to more than 25 percent of GDP. And as the old joke goes, that’s the good news. As the full force of entitlement programs kicks in, the federal government will consume more than 40 percent of GDP by the middle of the century. That doesn’t even begin to count state and local-government spending.”

The Deficit Is a Symptom, Spending Is the Disease | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary.