Just how much is $16 trillion, the amount of US debt?

Earlier this week, the U.S. national debt escalated to more than $16 trillion for the first time in history.

There’s no doubt that is a huge amount of money, but just how does $16 trillion stack up (literally)?

Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman attempted to put the U.S. national debt into perspective in a press release Thursday showing how much space $16 trillion would take up if it were laid out entirely in $1 bills.

Here’s the breakdown of $16 trillion in $1 bills:

- Would cover the entire State of Ohio nearly 1.5 times
- Would stack to the moon 4 times
- Would fill the Horseshoe at Ohio State 19 times over
- Would fill the Sears Tower 31 times over- Would cover every square inch of highways, road, parking lots, and pavement in the U.S.

Here are some other comparisons offered up by Portman to put $16 trillion into perspective:

- $51,000 per person
- $130,000 per household
- 32 times as large as the GDP of Ohio
- Equal to size of our country's entire economy (GDP )
- The approximate value of the entire U.S. stock market

And of course:

Enough to buy both the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds 1,918 times.