The mathematical peril of debt came forcefully to my awareness when I received my bank’s statement for my first mortgage payment of $246. Of that payment, I was informed that $241 went to pay interest and only $5 to retire principal. Convinced that there must have been a gross error, I went to the bank to challenge their report. No, the loan office replied, that’s standard for a 30 year mortgage.

The federal government, under both Democrats and Republicans, has followed a very different course. We now have more than $21 trillion in national debt. The interest paid last year by American taxpayers on that debt was nearly $300 billion. To put our interest payment in perspective, it’s about 20 times as much as a wall facing Mexico would cost, and approximately 40 percent of our total military budget. Credible forecasts estimate that we will be paying $700 billion in interest in just a few years.

It gets worse. Added to our huge interest burden is the growing cost of honoring commitments made to aging baby boomers through Medicare and Social Security. If you thought the payroll taxes they, and you, pay towards entitlement programs were invested for your retirement, you’d be wrong. In fact, the federal politicians divert payroll tax revenues to pay annual government deficits.

Republicans have been shouting about this as long as I can remember. We called for an amendment to balance the budget. Just a few years ago, the Tea Party movement brought new energy to the issue. But now that Republicans are in charge in Washington, we appear to have become silent about deficits and debt.

Last year, in round numbers, the government took in $3 trillion and it spent $4 trillion. The extra trillion was borrowed from other countries, institutions, and individuals, and we will pay them billions in interest on their loans every year. The non-partisan forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office predict growing deficits for the next several years, each over one trillion dollars.

I’m not saying we should immediately cut one trillion dollars from government spending. But I am saying, with a booming economy, full employment, a soaring stock market, and record asset values, we should be shrinking the deficit, not growing it.