U.S. adds $239 billion to debt in a single day

With the Obama administration's rapid-fire tapping of Congress's nearly $1 trillion expansion of its credit line, the debt zoomed by $239 billion on Tuesday. That's about five times the real "cuts" scheduled to occur over the next decade under the bipartisan debt deal. To draw a comparison, we are supposed to get about $900 billion in "cuts" -- but they are spread out over a decade, meaning most of them are unlikely ever to happen since they are scheduled for "out years" and cannot be enforced on future Congresses. The Obama administration, however, was given $400 billion in new borrowing authority for this week, and promptly ate up 60 percent of it in a single day.

That's dollar-for-dollar debt and cuts, Washington style.