Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 4, 1990 TAG: 9004040058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
That's $3,000,000,000,000. Count them: a three and 12 zeroes.
A person counting a $1,000 bill each second would take 133 years just to reach $1 trillion.
And when the national debt reached $3 trillion, it meant that it would cost every man, woman and child $12,000 to pay it off.
"The debt subject to limit did go over $3 trillion on Monday," confirmed Peter Hollenbach, public affairs officer for the Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt.
The actual level of public debt subject to statutory limit at the end of the day Monday was $3.023 trillion. That's just $99.59 billion under the statutory limit of $3.123 trillion. The national debt stood at $2.989 trillion last Friday.
Hollenbach said that despite a growing number of income tax receipts at this time of year, he expected the debt to continue to grow as long as the budget is not balanced.
Congress enacted the current debt limit last November.
The debt reached $1 billion in 1916 during World War I, climbing to $278 billion by the end of World War II.
It reached its first trillion on Oct. 1, 1981, and rose to $2 trillion on April 3, 1986.
The rapid growth in the debt stems from fact that the government been running huge deficits for the past decade. The inability to reduce the federal deficit was considered the major economic failure of the Reagan administration.
Democratic opponents often pointed to the fact that President Reagan ran up more public debt in his eight years in office than all of his predecessors put together.
The federal deficit has continued to grow since then and totaled $152.1 billion during the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30.
By the end of February, the deficit had reached $97.52 billion, just $2.48 billion less than the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction target for the entire year.
Interest on the deficit during February totaled $17.32 billion and is expected to reach $254.85 billion for the year.
Analysts have said the target for fiscal 1990 has all but been abandoned, with some suggesting the actual imbalance for the year will total $160 billion to $165 billion.
by CNB