40 Trillion

We are robbing our children and our grandchildren of their future.

Forty Trillion Dollars. As of this week, the United States now owes more than $40 Trillion. With a capital "T." Before we begin analyzing this number, let's start with scale.

Our first example for scale is time:

• 1,000,000 (million) minutes = 1 year, 10 months, 25 days

• 1,000,000,000 (billion) minutes = 1,900 years

• 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) = 1.9 million years

Our second example for scale is money:

• According to Fidelity Investments and other financial firms, the average cost for a platinum health insurance plan in the United States for a 40-year-old is approximately $12,000/year.

• $40,000,000 (million) can insure 3,333 adults for one year

• $40,000,000,000 (billion) can purchase the health insurance company Humana

• $40,000,000,000,000 (trillion) can insure the entire population of the United States for greater than 10 years without any price negotiations, or purchase every single health insurance company in the world and have cash to spare

In 2025, the United States collected $5.23T in revenue, and we are on track to collect nearly that amount again in 2026. According to USASpending.gov, the United States is set to spend $8.3T, which means it will borrow $3T in 2026 alone.

The United States now spends roughly $1.1T per year, or $100B per month, on net interest. Net interest is just the payment of interest owed and does not reduce the actual debt or the principal balance the United States owes. It is purely interest. This means that a single month's interest payment by the federal government can fund Oklahoma for eight years. To emphasize the point: 1 month's interest by the federal government = 96 months of funding the State of Oklahoma.

When Tom Cole took office in 2003, the United States owed $5.75T. This means that this so-called "fiscal conservative" has helped the United States borrow $34T. And to drive the point home: Mr. Cole is the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and has the power to rein in spending and demand a balanced budget, single-handedly. And yet, we are borrowing money at an alarming rate.

It took the United States 230 years to borrow that first $5.75T. Then, in just 23 short years, Mr. Cole has helped the United States borrow 596% more than we owed when he took office. And it must end. I am tired of politicians pledging to reduce the deficit and rein in spending during campaigns, only to vote in ways that completely undercut those pledges.

Here is my pledge: when you elect me to represent you on November 3, I will vote only in favor of balanced budgets and will not vote to increase the debt limit. We have been told our entire lives that we must live within our means, avoid overspending, and avoid falling into the credit card trap. If the American people must live this way, then so must the United States government. It is well past time to balance the budget, reduce overall spending, and begin to pay down the federal deficit. We are robbing our children and our grandchildren of their future and the right to spend government revenues as they see fit when we continue to blow cash at a rate that threatens the long-term health of our democracy.

I pledge to be your budget hawk, Oklahoma. All I ask is for the chance to prove it, since my opponent has already proven that he is not.

Vote Mitchell Jacob for Congress on 11/3.