Does the Size of the U.S. National Debt Matter?

Today I am going to college, taking courses finishing up my degree; tomorrow I am picking up some extra hours at work, next year graduating from college. Sounds like a pretty easy going lifestyle, but what if you take a step back and view my life from a different aspect, from an economic stand point perhaps. I am just one of hundreds of thousands students going to school right now. Every paycheck I bring home every week has had some money deducted from it. Where does all this money go? Federal State Income tax, Medicare Tax, Social Security Tax and Minnesota State Income tax, which is fine if that money was going to be available to me when I need it. But realistically I know it won't. The United States national debt is very large. We are too busy living for today when we should be saving for tomorrow.

National debt can be termed as any money owed by the government. The government gets the majority of its money from us, the taxpayers. But because of more government spending in one year than government receipts, we come up short. And over time that debt has accumulated to what now is beyond necessary. I do believe that the size of the national debt matters. The money that I am working hard to make today is going to another person's social security check; not into an account that will be there when I need to collect on my social security. I know we live in a world that isn't fair, but how is it reasonable that my generation is going to have to pay for other generations mistakes?

It seems like every time you turn on the nightly news someone is talking about our national debt and how it is continuing to grow. Of course every political party seems to have a solution to fix the national debt problem, but which is right? Is it even possible to get rid of the nation's debt? I don't think that it is necessary to completely eliminate the debt; however, it would be helpful to us as a country to shrink the size of the debt.

According to the American Prospect, yesterday the U.S. reached its national debt limit. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, believes in more "extraordinary measures" to keep the government functioning financially. Geithner believes in a debt cap, no longer allowing politicians to live with the unsustainable deficits that face our nation because they cannot or do not know how to fix the problem; whereas the Republican Party are willingly to cut spending in exchange for an increase in the National debt ceiling. Geithner described the debt cap going into effect in the following year if congress cannot seem to pass its own measures. The goal of the debt cap is to slowly but drastically bring down the deficits down 3% of GDP rather than the 10% it is currently at. Giethner also calls from an end to the Bush-era tax cut for those making more that $250,000 a year. Now I am not one to focus on politics but I would have to agree with that statement. If our nation is in so much trouble