MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US debt soars past 15tn while another political storm is brewing in Congress

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said “the last minute is fast approaching

The US government's debt load topped the 15 trillion dollars mark Wednesday, as politicians in Congress continued to battle over how to cut spending. Treasury figures showed the burden of federal borrowing reached 15,033,607,255,920.32, up 55.8 billion from Tuesday.

That was roughly equal to 99% of the country’s GDP projected for 2011, a level normally seen as very unhealthy by economists. US government debt has steadily climbed since August 2, when Congress broke a three-month deadlock and agreed to raise the country's official debt ceiling from the then 14.3 trillion to 15.194 trillion dollars.

Debt covered by the ceiling -- slightly less than total public debt -- has grown to 14.989 trillion since then, with the government spending some 1.40 for every dollar it takes in revenues.

The 15tn dollars mark was hit as a joint Democrat-Republican panel in Congress, tasked to slash the government deficit that has driven borrowing so high, appeared deadlocked just over a week before their November 23 deadline. The target is to implement cuts of 1.2tn dollars over a decade.

If the deficit super-committee cannot agree, Congress is required to itself automatically make sweeping cuts to the budget a year from now that could crunch the US economy. Automatic cuts to Medicare, defence spending and other critical areas of the budget would go into effect in Jan. 2013.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said “the last minute is fast approaching” on the congressional super-committee’s efforts to agree on a plan to cut the US deficit.

Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said he hasn’t seen “any indication” that Republicans will agree to what Democrats consider a “balanced approach” of spending cuts and tax increases. He said he had met with House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, though their discussion of the super-committee talks was “non-substantive.”

Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee told reporters “failure is not an option” and that the super-committee needs to agree on a plan this week.

US debt soared past 10tn on September 2008 and since then has been accumulating liabilities at a rate of a trillion every seven and a half months. In its latest report the IMF estimates the US debt will reach 100% of GDP at the end of the year; 105% of GDP in December 2012 and 115% by 2016.

In the budget year that ended last September the US government ran a 1.3tn deficit, the third straight year it has been over one trillion.

A decade ago, the government was running surpluses and trillion-dollar deficits seemed unimaginable. But those deficits now loom over tense negotiations in Washington.