How Did We Get Here

America is in the middle of a crisis. The country is in almost 17 trillion dollars of debt and that is rising every day. How did we get here? The government is spending enormous amounts and not doing anything effective to stop the accumulating debt.
The total debt in America is nearing 17 trillion dollars. This is due to excessive spending and waste within the government. The government will fund projects that are of no real use to America. This is what we call "pork barrel spending." These are often ridiculous projects that are funded because the firm or group helped contribute in some way to a politician getting into office. There is also too much waste in the government. For a long time the government didn't use both sides of a piece of paper when writing. This would lead to using twice as much paper. This may seem small but the government could less money on paper and more on paying back debts.
In the government there is too much pork barrel spending. The government spent over 18 million dollars on a website to track how much the government was spending on stimulus. That is an outrageous amount of money to spend on any website. That 18 million dollars could be spent paying back the national debt or giving back tax returns. Another example of pork barrel spending is the government recently spent almost two million dollars on research as to why pigs smell. Clearly this needed to be researched it will help Americans so much to know why pigs smell.
The tax system in itself is a waste and changing it would help slow if not stop the debt from climbing. It rewards people for things that they should not necessarily be rewarded for. The more kids you have the more tax deductions you have. Don't get me wrong kids are great however when someone doesn't have to pay taxes because they are not making as much money and have a large number of kids, that is simply unacceptable. There is also a loophole in the tax system that rewards people for not being married. There was a couple who was unmarried but had four kids. The man of the household earned a handsome salary and filed his taxes separate from the woman. The woman put their kids on her taxes and she had no job. The man paid the taxes that were supposed to be paid for a single man earning his level of income and the woman not only didn't have to pay hardly any taxes but she went to school for free as well, on government grants. If the government were to stop loopholes in our tax system like this they would not be losing as much money as they are.
The Government is in dire need of an overhaul in many aspects. Eliminating waste, ending pork barrel spending and fixing loopholes in taxes and other programs. We are here, at sixteen trillion dollars of debt, because the government is being stupid with their spending and have made it easy to get around the system.