1.4 trillion per year.. which is our annual deficit.. that MASSIVE.
and if you only reduce it by 100 billion per year it takes 14 years to reduce it to zero and during that 14 years you still add 10 trillion to the national debt, raising it to 24 trillion, and if you then continue to pay 100 billion per year after you have a balanced budget it takes 240 years to pay it off, and add that 14 years it took to get to the balanced budget and that is 256 years..
AND worse yet.. that assumes the world as enough money to loan us to continue to float that debt for 256 years.. and worse yet.. it assumes all those nice lenders continue to lend to us for 256 years at the current historically low interest rates..
And here is the big problem... even if we get control of gov spending, all of the people who have been living off of it.. directly or indirectly, are in big trouble financially.... and that is many of us retired people.
What happens to all of those soldiers when we reduce the military where it needs to be? They enter a 16% real unemployment market, and of course we will have to pay them unemployment benefits for 99 weeks or longer.. etc etc.
And the good old fashioned solution of starting a war willl not work because we already have two of those going, and our credit line is coming to an end.