Because Susan Noel has always lived within her means and because she believes the Bible says a nation shouldn’t borrow from another nation, the public debt of the United States — all $14.3 trillion of it — is $200 better off thanks to her personal donation.
The 64-year-old retired Florissant woman sent off a check to the Department of the Treasury a couple of weeks ago as she watched news of Washington’s infighting over raising the debt ceiling.
“Right now I can do a little,” said Noel, who has a master’s degree in computer science. “Maybe I can do something more in the future. I felt like I need to start giving.”
Noel’s humble gift stands in contrast to the partisan brinkmanship that has overwhelmed Washington this summer as lawmakers wrangled to find accord to both raise the debt ceiling and reduce deficit spending.
Yet the Bureau of the Public Debt is always accepting donations.
The little-known department, inside Treasury, takes gifts that go toward paying the outstanding principal of the nation’s debt securities.
The bureau does no soliciting — it has neither the desire nor the money for marketing — and relies solely on word of mouth for contributions, said spokeswoman Mckayla Braden.
Treasury officials do not count actual donors and do not keep state-by- state breakdowns of who gives. The Bureau of the Public Debt received $124,603.66 in June gifts and roughly $392,000 in July — perhaps evidence that the debate exhausting the nation’s capital this summer inspired more than just Noel to donate something.
Since 2009, the bureau has received about $3 million a year in donations.
“The ladies who process the incoming letters and checks confirmed that they are seeing more gifts now more than a month ago,” Braden said. “In their experience, they see that Americans generally tend to give more . . . when the nation is in a time of crisis.”
Noel said she first got the idea more than a year ago. She called the operator on her land line — she doesn’t own a cellphone — and asked where she could send money to help ease the country’s debt load.
The operator directed her to the Bureau of the Public Debt. She scrawled the note down but didn’t act on it until a few weeks ago when the fight over deficit reduction was in the news again.
Noel’s donation amounts to .0000000013986 percent, or about 1.4 billionths of 1 percent, of the $14.3 trillion in total outstanding debt, but that doesn’t bother her. She receives Social Security Disability Insurance and says she would be willing to take a cut in her monthly payments from the federal government in the name of sacrifice. She even used a familiar Washington adage in talking about it.
“We don’t want to kick the can down the road,” she said. “We need to address the issue, acknowledge we’re in debt and start to get it paid off.”
Braden said the bureau appreciates all gifts — it often receives money from estates, organizations and groups of people.
But even she called it a “drop in the ocean.”
“It’s too bad, but it’s the truth,” Braden said. “We’re not in a position to say that’s not the best financial decision in the world. We appreciate it. But I always want people to understand the reality of the situation.”
Allison Sherry: 202-662-8907 or asherry@denverpost.com
