Political Science Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Political Science - Term Paper Example Other government funded interests such as education, military and infrastructure will suffer greatly as well. Why these statements are valid along with imparting a general overview of the national debt so as to illuminate the crisis is this paper’s purpose. When Congress spends more than is collected, the country incurs a debt and must borrow money from foreign countries, mainly China, to remain operational. The national debt currently exceeds $13.7 trillion dollars (U.S. Treasury, 2010). According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the yearly payment on this debt, the deficit, reached $1.29 trillion as of last month (October, 2010). (Bartash, 2010). These figures are well past most peoples’ comprehension. Started in 1791, the national debt was, by those days’ standards, an incredible $75 million. Due to President Andrew Jackson’s prudent approach to government spending, the national debt was lowered to, again adjusted to today’s standards, to only $37 thousand. The Reagan/Bush administrations of the 1980’s ran the debt up by historic proportions. The massive increase of debt was not used for infrastructure, education, public programs or even to finance a war. As a result of Reagan’s ‘trick le down’ economic theory, the money wound up in the pockets of the rich. When President Clinton took office in 1993, the debt stood at $2.4 trillion. In the early 1990’s, Congress adopted a ‘pay-as-you-go’ policy and federal spending cuts which resulted in budget surpluses for four consecutive years. Clinton announced that the nation could pay off the debt by the year 2013 if it stayed on the present course (Schoen, 2006). That optimistic predication has long since been forgotten. Since 2000, the debt has more than quadrupled. In this time of increased globalization of the world’s financial markets, American legislators are more easily able to borrow from other countries that are experiencing a surplus of