Growls

The Wall Street Journal's blog, Washington Wire,reported today, "Total U.S. government debt eclipsed $16 trillion for the first time Friday, new government data show, as total federal borrowing continues marching toward the $16.394 trillion borrowing limit." The blog then added:

"The Treasury Department said total government debt hit $16,015,769,788,215.80 on Friday, up $25 billion from the day before. The amount of federal debt subject to the borrowing limit is actually slightly less, as it doesn’t include several types of borrowing, and it stood at $15.977 trillion on Friday.

"The government is projected to run a deficit of between $1.1 trillion and $1.2 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, meaning that spending will outpace tax revenue by that amount over 12 months.

"The deficit remains large because of a combination of factors, though Democrats and Republicans are at odds over who is more to blame for the rising debt levels. Federal spending remains high and tax revenue remains low as a share of the economy, compared with prior years."

Other resources for this reporting includes The Hill's blog, On the Money; Fox News; the Heritage Foundation's blog, The Foundry; and NewsMax. The Fox News includes a video with an interview of former White House economics adviser Austan Goolsbee.

But the $16 trillion debt figure is merely the official, sanctioned accounting figure. A more worrisome figure is the fiscal gap as we growled about on September 1, 2012 and August 26, 2012. Including state and local governments, the fiscal gap now amounts to $260 trillion. And as Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns explain in The Clash of Generations, that amounts to fiscal child abuse and a real war, a war on children.