An American Parable: Now Is the Time to Rein in Our National Debt, by Wendell Vinson

By Wendell Vinson, The Stream, April 28, 2025

Wendell Vinson is the cofounder of CityServe International, a church empowerment network that provides basic essentials and disaster relief to communities in need throughout the United States and around the world.

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

That attitude toward federal spending is attributed to the great Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen. It still holds true today but with one exception: Today, you’d have to use the word “trillion” in place of “billion.”

Just log on to The National Debt clock to see what we’re up against. But be careful. If you watch those numbers spiral too long, you might get vertigo.

Each day, the deficit spirals higher as new tranches of bureaucratic waste bring scrutiny. Here are some of the notorious examples of wasteful spending revealed in Sen. Rand Paul’s latest “Festivus” report. …