12 Scary Debt Facts for 2012

As President Obama unveiled the 2013 fiscal year budget, the nation's financial situation came back into sharp focus. Experts say partisan gridlock in Washington means the budget will probably go nowhere.

Considering this is an election year, however, expect politicians to harp on facts, figures and terms that most Americans weren't taught in high school. To help out, it's time to dredge up lots of scary facts to make you pay attention.

Before we get going, a quick primer on the number TRILLION:

• $1 trillion = $1,000 billion or $1,000,000,000,000 (that's 12 zeros)

• How hard is it to spend a trillion dollars? If you spent one dollar every second, you would have spent a million dollars in 12 days. At that same rate, it would take you 32 years to spend a billion dollars. But it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.

• And now, some scary facts about the debt and the deficit -- some basics:

• Deficit = money government takes in -- money government spends

• 2012 US deficit = $1.33 trillion

• 2013 Proposed budget deficit = $901 billion

• National debt = Total amount borrowed over time to fund the annual deficit

• Current national debt = $15.3 trillion (or $49,030 per every man, woman and child in the US or $135,773 per taxpayer)

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