I had a sit-down interview with AP Government and Economics teacher Mr. Ryan Richards at Enochs High School. We had a deep conversation about the United States national debt. 

To begin, I asked him the big question, “What is the national debt?”

“The national debt is an accumulation of all the money that we borrowed and owe back,” said Richards. “Which could be to other nations or individuals who have bought government bonds.” 

TORNBERG: “What is the difference between a debt and a deficit?” 

RICHARDS: “Deficit is just the gap between how much we intend to spend and then how much money we have actually brought in as revenue. So currently the deficit is about 2 trillion dollars. Which means we have about 2 trillion dollars of expenses that we don’t have money for. Usually what happens when you have a deficit, you have to come up with the money somehow so you often go into debt. Debt is a way to pay for things you can’t afford when you’re in a deficit”.

TORNBERG: “Is the national debt a problem?”

RICHARDS: “*pause* It is problematic, but to the degree that it is a problem is where there is disagreement. But the national debt as of right now is somewhere around 36 trillion dollars. Which I like to remind people that a trillion is a billion billions. Which is a lot of money. But to service debt you have to pay interest. But we are not paying down our debt, as it is continuing to grow. It is at the highest level it has been in U.S. history by quite a bit. The previous highest was in World War II, when you could argue we were fighting to save the world. The concern here is primarily to service that debt which means we have to make interest payments. Our interest payments are over 10% of our national budget. We are essentially paying about 13%  of our national budget which comes out to almost a trillion dollars a year,” said Richards. “Basically as a thank you note for things we bought in the past that we couldn’t afford.” 

The Eagle Eye staff themselves engaged in an in-depth discussion and/or argument regarding the national debt with the Eagle Eye advisor, Mr. Jason Campbell a few days prior to this interview. The national debt is a cloudy issue, but if there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that there are many layers to this issue, and it’s a prevalent problem that almost every generation is bringing their attention to.