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President Barack Obama participates in a youth town hall event broadcast live on BET, CMT and MTV networks, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010, in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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Thursday, October 14, 2010
By Terence P. Jeffrey
(CNSNews.com) - The national debt increased for the 53rd straight fiscal year, jumping $1.65 trillion in fiscal 2010, according to data posted online by the Bureau of the Public Debt and confirmed by a spokesperson for the agency. The bureau is a division of the U.S. Treasury Department.
In the past, there have been times when the federal government has managed to put together strings of years when the national debt fell. This was the case, for example, between 1920 and 1930, when the federal debt declined every year for eleven years before the government began ramping up borrowing and spending in response to the Great Depression.
The bureau says its reporting of the federal debt as of the end of each fiscal year (as posted here) states exactly to the penny the full and actual amount the U.S. government has borrowed as of that date.
The bureau’s comprehensive accounting of the “total public debt outstanding” includes not only that portion of the national debt held by the public in securities such as Treasury bonds but also that portion which is in the form of special government securities (or IOUs) held by elements of the federal government itself such as the Social Security trust fund--from which the Treasury Department has borrowed money in order to pay government expenses not related to Social Security.
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