

© Steve Greenberg

Here are the hard facts about the deficit for the last 11 presidents.

In 2007, we paid $430 billion of our tax money just in interest payments on the national debt. That’s around $1.2 billion a day. To put this in perspective, thats three times more than the annual budgets for NASA, education, and transportation put together. And this number is increasing dramatically. With 2008 only half over, we have already paid $377 billion in interest payments, $110 billion in the month of June alone ($2.5 million in the minute it took you to read this!). And a big chunk of our debt is owned by foreign governments, including China and various oil exporting countries.