Too bad it's not "just" $9 Trillion.

This is the opening paragraph of a Wall Street Journal interview with David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office:

David Walker sounds like a modern-day Paul Revere as he warns about the country's perilous future. "We suffer from a fiscal cancer," he tells a meeting of the National Taxpayers Union, the nation's oldest anti-tax lobby. "Our off balance sheet obligations associated with Social Security and Medicare put us in a $56 trillion financial hole—and that's before the recession was officially declared last year. America now owes more than Americans are worth—and the gap is growing!"

Let’s do the math again, still assuming a million dollar daily pay down of the debt:

$56,000,000,000,000 / $365,000,000

= 153,424 years