Broke Treasury is broke

Luckily, they get to make their own rules:

The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has - at least numerically - exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill...

A senior Treasury official told CBS News that the department has some "extraordinary accounting tools" it can use to give the government breathing room in the range of $150-billion when the Debt exceeds the Debt Ceiling.

Is anyone really surprised that the Treasury has "tools" that allow it to issue more debt than it is allowed to issue? No?

How about surprise at born-again fiscal conservative Republicans who complain, "the liberals that are running this Congress have been on a wild spending spree for the last three* years..." No?

How about surprise that people seem to be seriously questioning whether Congress will keep raising the ceiling** rather than just enjoying the political theater for what it is? No?

Geez. Tough crowd...

* If by "three" he means "ten," then I'm right there with him.

** though not raising it would be the equivalent of a balanced budget amendment starting RIGHT FREAKING NOW, if Congress can't even hold spending within 10% of last year's numbers, there's no way they're going to chop this year's spending in half with one fell swoop. What individual members will do, when the vote gets close enough, is extract even more spending in exchange for their vote.