Deficit: Why Should I Care?

At the turn of this century, the American national debt stood at just under $6 trillion and the deficit at a "mere" $86 billion. Today, the national debt has topped $14 trillion, and the yearly deficit for 2011 is projected at a whopping $1.4 trillion.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department's Annual Report on the Public Debt, the debt is estimated to hit $19.6 trillion by 2015. The federal government has borrowed roughly 40 percent of its total budget for the last several years, a distu...