What did America do with all the money that it borrowed, whichi later put it in the red?

It used the money to pay for everything in the general budget -- which is to say, everything the government spends money on. Salaries of federal workers, defense, building roads, paying for healthcare, maintaining national parks, maintaining embassies in your country, and a million other things. There's no one specific thing the government borrowed to pay for. The whole budget is X, tax revenues fall short of X by some amount, and the government borrows to make up the difference between X and tax receipts.

The borrowing began when we declared independence from the Brits 236 years ago. Over the many years there has been less borrowing and more borrowing, the occasional surplus, and the debt was even briefly paid off once, around 1830 or so. But generally the government runs deficits and so borrows to make up the difference. Over time, that debt accumulates and so by now has built up to 16 trillion dollars.

This is how every government in the world, including your own, operates. America has a large debt because it's a large country with by far the largest economy, and everything happens on a large scale.

Gov Failure this is

It began with Iraq war - the expenses have not yet been shown in any federal accounts.

How much ?

I summed up all deficits since 2000 and the sum upto 8 trillion $ but the total debt is 16 trillion $ ....so the unaccounted are 8 trillion $ and must be on Iraq war.

trying to keep it simple...

Debt NOT money, is unleashed into the economy, it filters through the people, we create and add the value through our time and labor, we mail it back as "money".

1.Paper dollars without backing, are printed and unleashed into the economy.

2. Without backing of gold/silver, the paper dollars are valueless.

3. "Usage fees" (interest) are attached to the paper dollar currency.

4. The fees attached causes the Paper dollars to become negative value (or dollar bills).

5. The only way we can mail them back is when we receive them after we work.

6. Our time and labor adds value necessary for the paper dollars to be considered "money". We cannot print paper dollars and send them back like they were injected into the economy, we must work to add value to them before we can send them back (payments).

7.We are given debt, but mail them back as 'money".

8. The more paper dollars unleashed into the economy, the more debt/bills we are given that require us to add their value through our time and labor.

They are not unleashed into the economy as "money" because they have NO backing. They are debt/bills.

When we mail them back to pay fees/interest/taxes they can be viewed as good as 'money", because we supplied their value.

Went to senior US bankers as dividends/bonuses.

That is why Wall Street is so hated. The US relaxed controls that prevented another Wall Street Crash, as seen in the 1930's. That enabled the bankers to fraudulently rate Iceland as a good credit, allowing them to borrow 12 times more than the country's actual total value. The bankers then took huge bonuses but also "gambled" that Iceland would fail to repay, which they again claimed on. That money was Americas money.

But in order to compete and maintain a level playing field with the US, other countries including the UK, also had to relax its controls; something the Conservative government continue to blame the Labour party for. But they had no choice.

The result? Total collapse of the world economy, the money of which has been syphoned off and not re-invested into growth now in the possession of men using it to gain and maintain power. They are, incidentally, chief advisers to Obama!