As regards the unimaginable debt that the US is about to pile up, I found a comment in this post that sort of puts 9.8 trillion dollars into perspective:
There are 3600 seconds in an hour, 86,400 seconds in a 24-hour day, and 31,536,000 seconds in a 365-day year.
In the last 2000 years of human history, only 63,072,000,000 (63 billion) seconds have passed.
For 9.8 trillion seconds to pass, it would take 310,756 years. 9.8 trillion days would take 26,849,315,068 years.
The earth and the sun are estimated to be only about 4.5 billion years old.
And the entire universe is estimated to be about 13 billion years since the Big Bang.
So 9.8 trillion days is twice as long as the beginning of time.
