Every year about this time, when my mind turns to the taxes I’ll soon owe the federal government, I look at a few online sites which seek to answer by example the question: “How much is a trillion dollars?”

With one exception, these visuals and statistics generally bring some bitter laughter as well as a cloud of sadness. The laughter is aimed at the fools who have allowed our gross national debt to grow to well over $36 trillion. The sadness is for my children and grandchildren, and the future of my country. Though I try to remain on the side of optimism, one look at the U.S. National Debt Clock would surely send even the cheeriest Pollyanna into a tailspin.

And the exception? Those statistics and visuals I mentioned also bring on a sensation of sheer incredulity.

Here are just a few examples.

In “How Big Is a Trillion Dollars?” Bob McGlincy reminds us that a trillion dollars is a million times a million dollars. He then gives comparisons to help us visualize the product of that multiplication. A stack of a trillion $1 bills would stretch 67,866 miles into space. Spend $40 per second, and it would take you 729.5 years to blow through a trillion bucks.

Actor and conservative political activist Kirk Cameron uses some visuals to show the size of a trillion dollars. Displaying what looks like an endless fleet of 18-wheelers, for instance, Cameron tells viewers, “It would take more than 44,000 18-wheel trucks carrying a load of 25 tons each to transport a trillion one-dollar bills.” 

On KRWG Public Media, Jerry Pacheco says, “If you laid one billion dollars side by side like tile, they would cover about four square miles. A trillion dollars laid out the same way would cover approximately 3,992 miles, or 1,000 square miles larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.”

These examples help give us a sense of this astronomical figure, but for me a trillion dollars still boggles the imagination. Thirty-six trillion doesn’t even compute.

Nor, apparently, does it compute with those who continue to let this debt pile up without batting an eye. A case in point: both the Biden administration and Congress brought us the astounding spectacle of government burning through the bucks like the wildfires in California. A few billion for Ukraine here and there, billions to house illegal immigrants, overseas aid to friends and enemies alike, grants galore for activists and faux artists: unlike the hydrants in California, these fireplugs never ran dry.

Top that mélange off with an inflated federal workforce and a bucketload of corruption, and you have the D.C. spending spree that never stops.

Sane people who have dug themselves into a well of debt begin the long climb back to the surface by cutting their spending. You don’t need to be a financial guru like Dave Ramsey to know this. Even people like me, who are anything but, understand that if you want to chop down your debt, you first swing that ax at your luxuries. If that doesn’t do the trick, then you swing it again at perceived necessities. That gym membership gets the blade; you can jog through your neighborhood and lift weights in the basement.

These are the measures writ large that the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is bringing to the federal government. Waste and inefficiency have long been synonymous with our government, but few of our politicians in either party have the will and courage to do anything about it. DOGE is stripping away the masks and disguises employed by government to hide not only its ineptitude but its corruption. Common sense voters, Republicans and Democrats alike, should be cheering on Elon Musk and his intrepid band of warrior-geeks.

Is it too late for the cuts, firings, and shrinkage of agencies to impact our national debt and restore economic health to our federal budget? I don’t know. Even the experts disagree. But with so many weak-spined professional politicians having failed to protect taxpayers for so long, always more worried about their power and their electability than they are about the good of taxpayers and the American people, the deadwood-cutters at DOGE offer at least a glimmer of hope in what might be the first step in turning this ship around.

For years I’ve said—and I meant it—that I’d prefer burning my tax dollars in the backyard to sending a check to the IRS to fuel our government’s absurd projects. Given the waste, perfidy, and fraud DOGE has exposed so far, my choice of a lighter and a firepit sounds more logical than ever.