To the editor:

Let’s consider this for a second; A day on Earth consists of 86,400 seconds. One MILLION seconds is 11 1/2 days, one BILLION seconds is 31 years, and, one TRILLION seconds is 31,000 years. Those zeros sure add up.

Now let’s consider that the U.S. government is $22 TRILLION in debt and will soon be running a one TRILLION dollar deficit every year in the future. I have not mentioned all the unfunded mandates coming soon which is projected to be about $240 TRILLION. $240 TRILLION is about $750,000 for every man, woman and child in America, while polls show that the average family can’t come up with $500.

For the first time ever, an audit was done on the Pentagon and it’s not pretty. There was over $6 TRILLION in unaccounted spending in 2015 alone and $21 TRILLION in spending not accounted for in total. Where did all of this money go? You can only buy so many $600 toilet seats.

If the Pentagon could find this “missing” money, they could pay off the national debt. But that won’t happen. In fact, CONgress will keep giving the Pentagon more of our money which now consists of $.54 of every dollar the federal government spends.

Have you ever heard of credit default swaps? There are $623 TRILLION on the books currently. That’s more than half way to a QUADRILLION dollars!

One QUADRILLION seconds is 31 MILLION years in case you’re wondering.

Jim Hirschberg

Lohrville