Three trillion dollars = $3,000,000,000,000.

That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. Three trillion is three million million dollars. The U.S. government spends more than the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Australia, China(!) and Spain combined.

"It took over 200 years for the US to get to a $1 trillion government budget, something like 20 years to get to $2 trillion and only 7 years to get to $3.1 trillion. We are mortgaging our children's, grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's futures. Every dime we add to the debt is a dime that will have to be paid back (with interest) in the next 2 or 3 generations. At the moment of birth a child in the United States today owes $79,000. The debt is accelerating. It is growing way faster than any ability to pay it off, hence IT WILL NOT BE PAID OFF! There will be a default and massive inflation before the final collapse. This star could have continued on for many years, but the US government has spent all the fuel. We will see, in our lifetime, the massive Super Nova explosion just before the US becomes a white (latino?) dwarf" - Jimmy

The total debt obligation of the United States now exceeds 46 TRILLION DOLLARS. The GDP of the U.S. is currently about $13 trillion. We have mortgaged our house to over 3-1/2 times it's total "income." 

If you laid dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 600 times before you ran out of dollar bills!

Three trillion dollars would stretch from the Earth to the Sun nearly three times!

It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 42 years before it reeled out three trillion dollar bills.