Donations Still Trickle into Government's 'Debt Pot'

WASHINGTON — 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.

"So long as we're running huge budget deficits, the willingness of the public to contribute their nickels and dimes and dollars isn't going to do much good to pay down the debt," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan grassroots group that advocates for debt reduction. "Nobody should kid themselves."

The donations themselves are tax deductible.

"This is something that you can put down as a charitable contribution," explained Joyce Harris, a spokeswoman for the bureau.

In theory, at least, that means that for every dollar donated, someone's tax payments are reduced by somewhere between 20 and 30 cents, so the government collects that much less in taxes.

It costs money to administer the program, doubtless more, in the cases of small checks, than the value of the donation itself.

There's no clear estimate of what it costs to run the program: it's part of broader Treasury operations.

"We're managing all kinds of trust funds and Social Security funds, so I don't think there's any kind of cost, per se, of running that program," said Harris.

The checks trickle in, several dozen a month, said Hallenbach, who sends thank-you notes to anyone who donates $5 or more.

That task has made Hallenbach something of an expert on the kinds of folks who contribute cash to pay down a small portion of the debt and the varied reasons why they do it.

"It's generally a concern for how big the debt is and also a desire to give something back," he said. "They'll say, 'I would like to see that debt go away so that my children, grandchildren, won't have to deal with it.'"

He remembers some of the colorful contributions, like the jeweler who designed a special saxophone lapel pin during the Clinton administration and sent the proceeds into the debt pot.

"There were some kids in South Carolina one time that held a car wash — the gift was around two hundred bucks," he said. "Other kids have kind of put the old pickle jar around in stores."

Then there was the elderly man donating to give thanks for a country that welcomed him in his youth.

"We had a bequest several years ago from a gentleman who had emigrated to the United States in the 1920s," said Hallenbach. Pressed as to the amount of the donation, he said: "It was in the high five figures, let's put it that way, for the country that had afforded him the opportunity to live his life in freedom and dignity."

The effort isn't entirely in vain. At $9.2 trillion and rising, the national debt is still, after all, $72 million less than it would be without the donors.

In the end, though, the program probably best serves the cause by raising awareness of the scale of the national debt and helping to build a consensus for reducing it, said Bixby.

"The best way for people who are concerned about the public debt to do something about it," he said, "is to elect public officials that are concerned about the deficit and are willing to do something about it."