If time is money, then every second is worth more than $93,000.

That is $1 per second from every person at a packed Sanford Stadium. At an increasing rate of more than $8 billion per day, the federal debt is experiencing explosive growth.

Sound like a nightmare? The Concord Coalition thinks so. According to the group, each American would owe more than $36,000 if today’s debt were paid off equally by every American citizen.

The Concord Coalition is a non-partisan organization that educates Americans about the reasons and repercussions of federal budget deficits, according to the group’s Web site.

“It’s such a shame that young people will have to pay so much money for a government that preceded them,” said Phil Smith, national political director of the Concord Coalition and University graduate. “There are a lot of people in Athens who may not realize that their name is being signed to a lot of contracts.”

To put a single person’s share of the debt into perspective, $36,000 equates to 5,760 Crown-and-Coke cocktails at Allgood Lounge, or one bowl of Ramen noodles every night for the next 493 years.

It’s also approximately $1,000 more than the average salary of students who graduated in 2008.

“The longer we wait, the worse this problem is going to get,” Smith said. “We’re making the Titanic hit straight into the iceberg with our numbers.”

According to some University faculty, however, the impending economic iceberg may be less of a worry than the Concord Coalition is making it out to be.

“It’s something to think about but it’s not as big of a problem as it might seem,” said economics professor William Lastrapes, who said the information from the Concord Coalition is misleading.

The total federal debt is more than $11 trillion, and more than $4 trillion of that are loans within the government that won’t require additional money from taxpayers.

As for the other nearly $7 trillion, Lastrapes is not too worried.

“We worry about debt or deficits, but all of that is just future taxes,” he said. “But if federal government becomes bigger and that affects the growth rate of the economy, then we could be worse off.”

President Barack Obama, however, has plans to tackle the nation’s financial crisis. In February, he announced a budget he said would cut the federal deficit in half by 2013 by cutting military spending and increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and businesses.

Although it may be a step toward curbing spending, some say the plan would have little effect on the debt.

“I think it’s balogna,” said former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich in an interview Tuesday. “If you look at the numbers in that plan, they’re stunningly dishonest…To really get a real balanced budget, you have to be honest. The burden for people under 30 is going to be unbelievable in taxes.”

Some students have similar concerns about Obama’s plans to cut the deficit.

“[Obama is] not going to do that by proposing budgets that add $3.5 trillion in new debt,” said Barclay Hendrix, a junior from Columbus, referring to the budget passed last week in Congress.

“Needless to say, I think the national debt is really, really scary. It’s our generation and our children’s generation that will have to inherit the consequences of it, and obviously our current spending levels are unsustainable. That’s why I think the budget Congress just passed is so incredibly irresponsible. The unprecedented levels of borrowing and spending are putting us on a path toward bankruptcy.”

Smith said action is necessary to diminish the debt.

“We need to show the world that we do have our act together,” he said. “College students are underrepresented in Congress and overrepresented when it comes time to pay the bills. I think that’s an issue that should get a lot of college students more interested, and frankly, excited about what they can do because there’s so much that college students can do to have an impact.”

Aly Spradlin, a junior from Roswell, said she is less concerned about federal debt.

“Big numbers sound scary,” she said. “I don’t sit at home and pull my hair out worried about the national debt. It’s easy to simplify it, but it’s not that simple.”