The National Debt
True or false. The U.S. national debt is 20 TRILLION dollars?
True. The U.S. national debt is 20 trillion dollars. This is a dangerously high level of debt that will threaten the economy that we will inherit. As our national debt burden grows, the economy is left with less fuel for innovation, entrepreneurship, growth, and job creation. Younger generations will be the ones that get stuck with most of the bill.
Name one of the three main categories of the federal budget.
The three main categories of the federal budget are discretionary spending, mandatory spending, and interest on the national debt.
In what city was the first national bank of the U.S.? Hint: It’s also where the U.S. Constitution was written.
The first bank of the United States was in Philadelphia, PA. It was chartered for a term of twenty years by the U.S. Congress in 1791!
True or False: If you were alive when "Christ" was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.
How many President's died on the 4th of July?
A) 0
B) 1
C) 3
D) 5
Adams, Jefferson, Monroe
Who does the U.S. government owe the most debt to? Is it
A) The American people
B) Foreign investors
C) U.S. banks
D) Foreign banks?
It’s A, the American people. The American people buy U.S. bonds because they are often a safer bet than stocks and can make their retirement and investment portfolios seem less risky.
Are Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security part of the mandatory spending category or the discretionary spending category of the federal budget?
They are part of the mandatory spending category. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security account for approximately 2/3 of the federal budget. They are called “entitlement” programs because they are mandatory spending categories— meaning the government has to fund these programs because the law dictates.
True or false. 55% of student debt is owed to the federal government.
False. It’s actually much higher—92% of student debt is owed to the federal government. The remaining 8% is owed to private institutions.
If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for ____?
A) 25 days
B) 55 days
C) 5 days
D) 15 days
A) 15
B) 12
C) 5
D) 7
Does this definition describe debt or deficit?
Blank is the amount by which spending exceeds revenues over a given period (usually a 12-month fiscal year).
Deficit. The deficit is the amount by which spending exceeds revenues over a given period (usually a 12-moth fiscal year). A deficit is the opposite of a surplus. Debt is the amount of accumulated deficits minus accumulated surpluses at a given point in time.
The second part of the federal budget is discretionary spending, meaning spending that is set by Congress and the President on a yearly basis through the appropriations process. Name three budget items that are funded through discretionary spending.
Discretionary spending categories can
include:
• Defense
• Education
• Transportation
• Veterans benefits and services
• Income security
• Health
• International Affairs/Foreign Aid
• Administration of Justice
• Natural Resources and Environment
• General Science, Space, and Technology
• Community and Regional Development
• General Government
• Medicare Administrative Costs
• Agriculture
• Social Security Administrative Costs
• Energy
True or false. The U.S. spends more money on defense than any other nation.
True. The U.S. actually spends more on defense than the next seven highest-spending countries combined.
A) 350 trillion dollars
B) 454 trillion dollars
C) 254 trillion dollars
D) 157 trillion dollars
Wowza!
Constitution
What is the term for a sum charged for the use of borrowing money?
Interest. Interest is a sum charged for the use of borrowing money. When the federal government borrows money to finance its deficits, it is legally obligated to make regular interest payments on those debts. Over the next decade, we’re on track to spend nearly $6 trillion just paying interest on the debt—and if we don’t take action to address the debt, interest payments will be the largest category of federal spending by 2050.
True or false. The government spends $269 billion a year on interest on the national debt.
True! The government does spend $269 billion a year on interest on the national debt this year. That figure is higher than what the government typically spends each year on education!
What American president referred to the national debt as the national curse?
Andrew Jackson. Before he was president, Jackson was a land speculator in Tennessee. He learned to hate debt when a land deal went bad and left him with massive debt and some worthless paper notes. So when Jackson ran for president, he knew his enemy: banks and the national debt. He called it the national curse and ran his campaign to take out the national bank, and pay off the national debt. He achieved this in 1835! People ate it up!
A) 18%
B) 55%
C) 25%
D) 36%
A) 3 trillion dollars
B) 5 trillion dollars
C) 1 trillion dollars
d) 10 trillion dollars
How many types of national debt are there?
Two. The Debt Held by the Public, or public debt, is all federal debt held by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside of the U.S. Government. The second type is intragovernmental debt, which is amounts borrowed from U.S. government accounts by the U.S. government.
Debt held by the public is by far the larger amount of these two.
What is the single largest program in the federal budget?
Social Security. Spending on social security is currently the largest federal program and is estimated to grow by 78 percent by 2027 to 1.7 trillion dollars.
In the U.S. is there more student loan debt or home mortgage debt?
Home mortgage debt. The largest category of personal debt is home mortgages with student loans coming in number two.
If every person in the U.S. had to pay back the
national debt tomorrow, what would they owe?
Approximately $62,210