Although this problem is huge, and I feel that every American (heck human, maybe) should do their best to grasp the issue, the visualization is a bit hyped.
Some of those figures they throw around like unfunded liabilities, are pretty open ended. Really just reasons to make a pile of cash look taller than the tallest buildings. Regardless, piles of cash don't really put the real problem into perspective.
There are real things that symbolize the national debt, the over-spending as a country that we have enjoyed, and they are larger than those buildings. The thousands of acres of cleared rainforest in the Amazon and southeast Asia, the Pacific gyre, the Gulf of Mexico, even the Fukushima incident is connected to our own great corporations that we buy light bulbs and energy from. Yes there is no money-based solution to our problem, it's a human problem, a huge problem.
Economies are sort of like the water cycle, except money doesn't create life necessarily. Water does. Bankers are like lakes, politicians are like dams, and the rain that feeds it all is actually the unimaginably large amount of resources that we borrow for imaginary numbers every day, every year.
I await congress's decision, or indecision, I await the following days. Though with no light-hearted expectations of my own.
Wow........ How many N. hamata "red hairy" plants could I buy with that much money?
Many many more than actually exist on Earth.