This is not good – US Treasury is running out of money

After reading this you might need a drink. CNS News reported that the United States Treasury is just about broke. They are down to $58.6 billion in cash, and have $130.5 billion in available credit. In other words, they don’t have anywhere near enough money to pay for even a month of spending. Scary.

Imagine that you had an average monthly income of about $170 balanced against average monthly expenses of about $940–and that you were more than $14,000 in debt.

Then imagine that as of today, you had only $58.60 in cash left in your bank account and $130.50 left on your line of credit.

Now multiply these numbers by 1 billion and you will have the up-to-date financial situation of the U.S. government.

This comes from a statement released by the Treasury. But wait, it gets worse.

In the same five months that it was averaging this $169.6 billion in revenue, the federal government was averaging $943.4 billion in monthly spending. (During those months, the Treasury actually spent $4.717 trillion—including, for example, $2.492 trillion to pay off the holders of Treasury securities that had matured, $245.7 billion in Social Security benefits, $212.8 billion in Medicare benefits, $158.4 billion to pay defense contractors, $113.0 billion for Medicaid benefits, $111.6 billion for Department of Education programs, $94.3 billion in interest on debt, $73.4 billion in salaries for federal workers, and $26.7 billion in insurance benefits for federal workers.)

All of these cumulative federal expenditures–and more—from the period of October through February were itemized in the “withdrawal” column of “Table II” in the Daily Treasury Statement for Feb. 28.

Thus far in March, as itemized in the Daily Treasury Statement released today, the federal government has spent $927.3 billion while taking in $184.2 billion in revenue.

Read the whole thing.

I’m starting to think a shut down of the federal government is the best possible thing that could happen right now. Good grief. And the Democrats are calling the GOP extreme for trying to cut spending.

Update: Maybe this isn’t the best time to be contemplating the purchase of a $600,000 gurgling toad to decorate a Department of Defense building in Virginia. Just saying.

Tags: borrowing, broke, scary, spending, US Treasury