Rob Portman says the national debt in $1 bills would cover all of Ohio

The U.S. government has carried debt since 1790, according to the Treasury Department, but the national debt didn't top $1 trillion until 1982.

When it hit $16 trillion for the first time on Sept. 4, 2012, Sen. Rob Portman called it "a dangerous milestone" and "troubling evidence that our nation is headed in the wrong direction."

In an attempt to put $16 trillion in terms everyday people can get their arms around, he also released a list of items showing how that much money stacks up -- such as "$16 trillion in $1 bills would cover the entire state of Ohio nearly 1.5 times."

Sixteen trillion is a lot of kapusta -- but is it enough to carpet the countryside and turn Ohio green? Just for fun, PolitiFact Ohio decided to survey the landscape

We got data from Portman staff's and checked the math. Here’s how it works out.

• A dollar bill has 16.0254 square inches. (It measures 2.61 inches by 6.14 inches.)

• Sixteen trillion dollar bills multiply to an area of 256,406,400,000,000 square inches. That translates to 1,780,600,000,000 square feet (after you divide by 12 squared, or 144).

• The area in square footage equals 63,870 square miles (after you divide by 5,280 squared, or 27,878,400).

That would cover Ohio's total area of 44,825 square miles 1.42 times -- or nearly 1.5 times.

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Mike Johnson

stated on December 5, 2024 in remarks to reporters

About 1% of federal employees are “actually working in the office.”

We ran the numbers again, using the land area of 40,860 square miles that the federal Census Bureau gives Ohio. Sixteen trillion singles would cover that area almost exactly 1.5 times.

On the Truth-O-Meter, Portman's statement rates True.