Many reading this sometimes return from a vacation and receive a rather large credit card bill. In that bill, we look at all that we spent, often on things we barely realized would add up. Yikes, it's such a big bill, how?? Often in the heat of the moment, we spend on things we don't really need and more than we normally would if we were physically counting single dollar bills, one dollar at a time. Credit cards do that!

Governments everywhere seem to spend the way we as humans spend with a credit card, except for one small detail, they don't pay the bill when it comes due. They either borrow more (at high interest rates) or tax more. Easy! These days, so many of us have to ponder: where did all the money go over the past 30 years? Here is a list:

1. $8.5-9 trillion interest on just Federal government debt.

2. Tax cheats and non-payment of owed taxes: anywhere up to $20 trillion.

3. $4 trillion in estimated aggregate assets held in foreign financial accounts by roughly 1.5 million U.S. taxpayers, with close to half stored in traditional tax havens like the Cayman Islands.

4. Government fraudulent payments: Since 2003 alone, executive branch agencies have recorded approximately $3 trillion in total improper payments.

5. Criminal scams, fraud, and theft: $1.5-3.5 trillion. Many criminals are released or pardoned without any obligation to pay back their gains.

Add up all the above, and what do you get? Around $39 trillion, about the size of the US national debt. Mystery solved! Wow, that was easy. There is lots of blame to go around and until we all take responsibility, there will be no easy path forward.

Anyone who has done a renovation or built a home knows how easy it is to keep adding to the cost without realizing how much things add up, quietly at first and then suddenly. We keep an accurate accounting of all these costs as they contribute to the cost basis but do Governments?