Wow. Our debt went up $101.3 billion in March. Not only is that the greatest increase we’ve had in one month but it all happened in the last ten working days of March. $77.3 of that increase came within hours of President Bush signing a bill to raise the statutory debt limit to almost $9 trillion (See: “$77 Billion in One Day”).

We are now up to an increase of $438.5 billion for the year and we've got six more months to go before the end of the government's fiscal year on September 30, 2006. Can we hit a trillion in one year and a month before midterm elections? So much for fiscal discipline.

Notice that the “Intragovernmental Holdings” (IH) entitlement side went down about ninety-seven million which is surprising and interesting. More on this in a moment.

That means the entire $101.3 billion (plus change) came from borrowing from investors, mostly foreign countries like China and Japan who already have us by the shorthairs.

Anyone with any common sense has to ask how John Snow and Mr. Van Zeck, Commissioner of the Treasury’s Bureau of Public Debt were able to schedule “auctions,” get commitments and cash from these countries, write contracts, and otherwise sell U.S. Treasuries within hours of having the debt limit extended. It seems physically impossible.

Congress passed a bill raising the debt limit to $8.965 trillion on Friday, March 17th, and Bush signed the bill making it law on Monday, March 20th, the same day the debt went up $77 billion.

The implication is that the Treasury Department was breaking the law by borrowing in advance of their legal authorization to do so. And they deserve much more than a slap on the wrist for this criminal behavior. But you don’t hear anything from the media, news columnists, or watchdogs on this subject do you?

We don’t punish our federal lawmakers for committing crimes. If we did, the Beltway Bandits would have been in the slammer long ago – which again brings us to the side of the national debt that went down last month.

Evidently, the Social Security and Medicare payroll tax overcharges in March did not produce enough surplus for the pirates to “enjoy” and could not offset constant withdrawals from the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), the Federal Employees Life & Health trust and possibly some other bogus entitlement accounts in Intragovernmental Holdings that we're paying for. American taxpayers pay for every withdrawal from any trust in IH. That’s all this section of the debt is for, taxing and double taxing American taxpayers.

This is the first time that the overall scam our government has been running for years now, a swindle that currently totals almost $3.5 trillion and could be eliminated with the push of a “delete” key has never before gone down.

Coupled with the recent demonstrations by illegal aliens, we might have an explanation for the erratic decline in Social Security surpluses (see: “Another Month of spinning the job market”). Are these “illegals” accounting for the increases in jobs we hear so much about? Are their employers really paying their payroll taxes? Or are their pay scales just so low that the government has a decline in receipts?

Welcome to the New World Odor. Now and later, it's at your expense.