For those of you educated in the public school system... a trillion is a million millions.

A million (1,000,000) multiplied times a million (1,000,000) equals a trillion (1,000,000,000,000)

Now,imagine receiving a tax bill for $531,472. Well, imagine no more. Thanks to the government’s ballooning social programs, this is now the cost per American household to fund government’s entitlement promises. According to a USA TODAY study, Washington’s long-term financial commitments to programs such as Medicare and Social Security grew by a whopping $2.5 trillion last year and now stand at $57.3 trillion. Add state and local government obligations into the mix, and the figure grows even more—to $61.7 trillion.

Specifically, in 2007, Uncle Sam charged an additional $1.2 trillion in Medicare, $900 billion in Social Security, $106 billion in civil-service retirement, and $34 billion in veteran benefits to its self-issued entitlement credit card. This diametric departure from reports of a shrinking federal deficit—which fell from $248 billion in 2006 to $162 billion in 2007—is because the deficit accounts only for current year costs rather than for lifetime expenses.

Unfortunately, when some Republicans sought a few years ago to ground skyrocketing Social Security costs by offering private savings accounts, Democrats’ scare tactics nixed the idea. Instead, Washington will now continue trying to fund its unchecked spending sprees, and we will continue to search the Constitution for the nonexistent clause that gives it the power to do so. Both efforts will fail.