At the end of this article, Ms. Dalrymple said "Congress will finish the tax bill while also hurrying to add nearly $1 trillion to the nation's debt limit before the Treasury runs out of borrowing authority."

Before the Treasury runs out of borrowing authority? Can you believe that? This writer is trying to tell us that the Treasury is approaching its debt limit or about to face a crisis. Are there still people in this country who believe we have a free and uncontrolled press, watchdogs bringing us news?

Unfortunately, this article will be read and reprinted in whole or in part by hundreds of newspapers in the country, papers that rely on the Associated Press for a good part of their daily news whether it's true or not.

The truth is that the government hit its self-imposed debt limit of $6.4 trillion back on February 20th of this year, three months ago. Since that time, every state, city, and local government in the union has been suffering shortfalls in expected federal money for everything from education to Homeland Security.

Local governments have been biting the bullet while Daddy Warbucks spends budgeted money on the invasion, occupation, and reconstruction of a pipsqueak nation that wasn't a threat in the first place, but happened to be sitting on a lot of his family's oil.

Here's the rest of the bad news.

On the same date, Tuesday, May 20, 2003, the U.S. Treasury released its Monthly Report for April, 2003, the second full month in which the government was not able to borrow and we can be certain all spending came right out of budgeted plans. Right out of discretionary budgeting that was supposed to go for other things like education, agriculture, housing, and so forth.

For the second year in a row, April receipts were down. The time when the federal government expects a windfall in personal and corporate tax receipts due on April 15th was another big disappointment:

These are the receipts for one month, the big income tax month. Overall, tax receipts from this and previous months are down $68 billion ($68.093 billion) from last year. And last year was a situation that caused massive borrowing to make up for the shortfall.

To Mitch Daniels credit, the Office of Budgets and Management planned on a shortfall of $17 billion compared to last year, a total of $1.836 trillion in receipts, but Congress and the administration budgeted spending at $2.14 trillion which resulted in a planned deficit of $304 billion. Too bad that we are already running $51 billion over the planned shortfall with five more months to go in the fiscal year. Do you think things are going to get better and tax receipts coming in all the time will make up for this shortfall by the end of September?

As a result, you can kick this year's deficit up to at least $355 billion, all money that must be borrowed from investors. And that's not including the money stolen from Social Security and other entitlement overcharges already in the budget, but increasing the national debt. You can count on another $150 billion from entitlement scams for a true deficit of more than $500 billion, one half trillion.

The economy better turn around pretty soon because the government's planning for next year, their budget for fiscal 2004 starting October first, is for $2.229 trillion in spending and an increase in tax receipts of $86 billion resulting in a planned deficit of $307 billion, only $3 billion higher than this year. What does that tell you about fiscal responsibility?

Now, with all of this planned borrowing wouldn't you think that the Associated Press would be keeping a closer critical eye on the U.S. Treasury?

It gets worse.

There is good news and bad news with entitlements. Social Security receipts from payroll taxes are already $6 billion higher than they were last year when Social Security produced an $89 billion surplus for the government to enjoy (steal). This is good news for the government.

For the first time this fiscal year, Unemployment taxes paid by employers were sufficient to cover outlays to the unemployed during April. The reason may be that unemployment benefits have run out for many without extensions, but this is good news for taxpayers. After paying $45 billion in repeat taxes that were paid previously by employers, we finally have a month where the Department of Labor did not have to draw on its bogus holdings in the Unemployment trust fund and we didn't have billions taken out of the current budget again for this reason.

Unfortunately, six other entitlements drew down on their holdings to the tune of $6.09 billion that cost us money from the general fund or double taxation in the month of April. Add that to the $16.5 billion in double taxation that we paid in March and we've got a total of $22.6 billion paid directly by us in two of the full months that the government could not borrow to cover it on the credit card.

Add the $22.6 billion to the shortages in April's tax receipts and year to date covered above, plus the money spent on the invasion of Iraq, and you can expect the national debt to jump well over $100 billion almost as soon as the debt limit is raised.

You will not hear this from any of the typical news sources, but you can look it all up yourself in the Treasury's web pages.