Donors have sent $72 million to help reduce national debt

It's the biggest tin cup in the world.

More than $9.2 trillion in the hole, the U.S. Treasury Department is hitting up donors to help pay off the debt. Civic-minded citizens send checks — mostly between $10 and $100 — to a post office box in Parkersburg, W.Va., and the donations quickly make their way into the public coffers.

"Some folks send in money on a regular basis," said Bureau of the Public Debt spokesman Pete Hallenbach. "It's kind of curious."

Since 1961, concerned citizens, grateful emigrees and schoolchildren culling quarters from pickle jars have ponied up $72 million in donations to help offset rivers of government red ink.
It hasn't made much of a dent in the debt.

With the federal government burning through nearly $6 million a minute, the money sent in over the past 47 years covers just 12 minutes of government spending. And with this year's budget deficit set to hit $410 billion, the country is piling on additional debt at a rate of $1.1 billion a day, or a staggering $46 million every hour.

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