US government warns it’s running out of cash

OK, let’s just quickly check out the article: US government warns it’s running out of cash

Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that unless Congress raises the national debt limit, the US government will run out of cash to finance its daily work in two months.

In a letter to Senate leaders Thursday, Snow said the statutory debt limit imposed by Congress of 8.184 trillion dollars would be reached in mid-February and the government would then lose its borrowing power.

“At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations,” said the letter, seen by AFP.

So, some questions are raised pretty quickly, right? Like “what’s the point of statutory spending limit, if the administration just spends without regard for it and then demands the limit be raised before the country defaults?”

My wife should totally be telling the Congress how to deal with this–if she set out a budget and I flagrantly overspent it and then came to her saying that the budget would need altering or we wouldn’t be able to afford the mortgage she would deal with me in the manner with which the current U.S. administration needs to be dealt. (Of course, if my wife were running the U.S. Treasury, there wouldn’t be a national debt, so the point is kind of moot.)

Also, just take a moment to reflect on that 8.184 trillion dollar number. That’s $8,184,000,000,000. Four commas. Four.

A scary fact for you–at the end of 2003 the U.S. debt crossed the $7 trillion dollar mark. That means that in just 2 years Bush has added A TRILLION DOLLARS to the U.S. debt. I.e., in the last 2 years Bush has added $3350 in debt for each American. Nice. (The current “debt per capita” is around $27,500, by the way.)

More interesting debt facts and figure at the U.S. National Debt Clock.

(Funny story: I showed this article to Alex, and his response? “Damn those spendy Democrats, look at the mess they left for this administration!” Darn that Clinton, he ruined everything.)

Oh, and for some “they both suck but at least my ruling class is better than your ruling class” comparisons, the current per captia debt in Canada is around $25,210, according to the Canadian Debt and Tax Clock, which is not really significantly better. Especially considering we’ve been running a budget surplus for the last 12 years. (Of course, we run that whole national health care thing as well, which is apparently fantastically expensive, without seeming to get into any more debt…)