Hey, it’s only money, right?
(CNS News)– The national debt jumped $463.6 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2011 (which ran from Oct. 1to Dec. 31), the Treasury Department reports.
That means the government borrowed approximately an additional $1,500 for every one of the 308,745,538 men, women and children in the United States as counted by the 2010 Census.
If government debt continues to accumulate at that pace through the remaining three quarters of the fiscal year, total new debt for the year would amount to approximately $1.85 trillion–or about $6,000 for every person in the country.
That would rival the $1.89 trillion in new debt the government piled up in fiscal 2009–the greatest debt-accumulation year in the history of the country–when the federal government bailed out some of the nation’s largest banks and President Barack Obama signed his economic stimulus package.
So far, fiscal 2010 (which ended on Sept. 30) ranks second after fiscal 2009, for the greatest federal debt accumulation–with the government adding $1.65 trillion in new debt that year.