• The US has increased national debt by $5.6 trillion in the last three and a half years. It took from 1789 until 2000, two hundred and eleven years, to accumulate the first $5.6 trillion of debt.
• Average annual deficit from 2000 through 2008 was $190 billion. Average annual deficits since 2008 have been $1.3 trillion. US deficits never exceeded 4% of GDP prior to 2008, but now they exceed 9%.
• The national debt will reach $20 trillion by 2015, and if interest rates normalized to the same level they were in 2007 (5%), annual interest expense would be $1 trillion, or 45% of current tax revenue. 
• The unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security exceed $100 trillion and cannot possibly be honored, leaving future generations to fend for themselves.

Source: James Quinn