In February of this year, I noted that the U.S. federal government debt reached $7 trillion for the first time.

As of October 5, eight months later, the official debt stands at $7.414 trillion. You know, I'm tempted to write the whole number out, because when you start rounding off at the billion dollar mark, that's still a lot of money. $7,414,024,541,823.04 for those keeping score.

That exceeds, by the way, the legal limit on debt. $7.384 trillion is the current ceiling as defined by law, and it takes an act of congress and the President's signature to increase that. So someone is breaking the law.

Still, in 8 months the U.S. government burned through more than $400 billion. News reports say the Defense Department is borrowing money from an emergency fund it keeps ($25 billion) to pay its bills until congress sends it more money. So the real debt is closer to $7.5 trillion...

From Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel:

No Congress or Presidential Administration ever likes to approve increasing the debt ceiling, because it puts the spotlight on their profligate spending and lack of fiscal control. They certainly don't like doing one in an election year. God forbid they are forced to approve one in the weeks or days before an actual election--especially this election.

From CBS MarketWatch:

Technically, on its current spending course, the government is expected to run out of money in "early October." But the administration can employ emergency accounting mechanisms to avoid hitting the $7.38 trillion mandatory limit until "mid-November," the Treasury estimates.

It's funny that noone minds talking about the need to increase the debt ceiling, and even some of the accounting tricks they will use to avoid hitting it until after the election, but noone wants to actually increase the ceiling now. It's as if their spending problem will magically go away after the election. Actually, it's more likely that the spending will still occur at the same pace, just that it will no longer be  a problem.