{"id":27694,"date":"2011-08-07T22:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T22:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/npr_a_national_debt_of_14_trillion_try_211_trillion\/"},"modified":"2011-08-07T22:00:41","modified_gmt":"2011-08-07T22:00:41","slug":"npr_a_national_debt_of_14_trillion_try_211_trillion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=27694","title":{"rendered":"(NPR) A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Boston University&#8217;s Laurence] Kotlikoff explains that America&#8217;s &#8220;unofficial&#8221; payment obligations \u201d\u201d like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits \u201d\u201d jack up the debt figure substantially.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That&#8217;s the fiscal gap,&#8221; he says. &#8220;That&#8217;s our true indebtedness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t hear more about this enormous number, Kotlikoff says, because politicians have chosen their language carefully to keep most of the problem off the books.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/08\/06\/139027615\/a-national-debt-of-14-trillion-try-211-trillion\">Read (or much better) listen to it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Boston University&#8217;s Laurence] Kotlikoff explains that America&#8217;s &#8220;unofficial&#8221; payment obligations \u201d\u201d like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits \u201d\u201d jack up the debt figure substantially. &#8220;If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=27694\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,670,149,168,617,675,616,151,667,618,673,669,584,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-budget","category-economy","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-house-of-representatives","category-medicare","category-office-of-the-president","category-politics-in-general","category-president-barack-obama","category-senate","category-social-security","category-the-national-deficit","category-the-u-s-government","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}