Just was playing with some numbers today:
After the bailout the US will have, conservatively, added $6.5 TRILLION to the US government debt under George W. Bush' administration. BTW, that is $6,500,000,000,000.00. But what does that really mean:
Let's look at it this way - the annual interest cost.
US debt bears an average annual interest rate of 4.360% ( from US Treasury Direct) - I do not know if this interest rate is weighted by outstanding debt by class or not.
If we want to be really nice the average rate for marketable US debt is only 3.902% (same source.)
So what:
Well, let's do the math:
$6,500,000,000,000.00 times .03902 equals:
$253,630,000,000.00 - (yeah, $253.6 BILLION per year) that is the increase in interest paid by the US government since Bush took office.
The US Population is 305,224,688 from the Census population clock
OK, lets divide $253,630,000,000.00 by 305,224,688;
That leaves $830.96.
That is the annual interest in the US budget due to the Bush drunken spending spree. This is not the "your grandkids will be paying for this" - this is the bill presented in the US budget that every man, woman and child in the US will be paying next year. BTW, more than the stimulus check most people got.
So, when the Republicans say "we can't afford $25 billion for SCHIP", you might explain that SCHIP is 1/10 of the money we are spending on debt interest due to Bush.
Why can't we afford a new roof - because we are paying off drunken Uncle George's credit card bills - that's why.