National Debt Jumps for 53rd Straight Year

The federal government reached an unhappy milestone with the announcement of the national debt figure for fiscal 2010 — it marked the 53rd straight year the debt had increased over the previous year.

As of Sept. 30, the last day of fiscal 2010, the national debt stood at $13,561,623,030,891 — over $13.5 trillion — an increase of $1.65 trillion over fiscal 2009, according to data from the Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department.

The Bureau’s “total public debt outstanding” includes the portion of the debt held by the public in the form of securities such as Treasury bonds, plus the portion in the form of special government securities held by elements of the federal government itself, such as the Social Security trust fund, according to CNSNews.

The Treasury Department has borrowed money from the trust fund to pay government expenses not related to Social Security.

Between 1920 and 1930, the federal debt declined every year for 11 years. The last time the federal debt did not increase was in 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower was president. This year the debt stands at around $13.2 trillion more than the debt in 1957.

During the federal government’s 53-year run of rising debt, the total has increased by an average of around $250 billion a year.

This year’s increase of $1.65 trillion is the second largest rise in the nation’s history. The largest ever? Fiscal 2009’s $1.88 trillion.