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$247.7 Billion is a complete bald-faced lie.

What about the $180 billion or so raided from the Social Security surplus?

How about the Treasury's financial report? Last year that was a $760 BILLION net operating loss. Assuming the same ~70 Billion reduction, that's what, ONLY $690 Billion?

Pocket change!! The GOP is doing a fantastic job

/supreme sarcasm

Agreed. The following table shows the federal debt over the past decade as given by the Treasury Department:

           TOTAL FEDERAL DEBT (billions of dollars)

                                 Intra-
  Fiscal   Debt Held              Gov't              Total
 Year End  by Public   Change  Holdings   Change      Debt   Change
---------- --------- -------- --------- -------- --------- --------
 9/29/2006    4843.1    241.9    3663.9    332.4    8507.0    574.3
 9/30/2005    4601.2    293.9    3331.5    259.8    7932.7    553.7
 9/30/2004    4307.3    383.3    3071.7    212.6    7379.1    595.8
 9/30/2003    3924.1    370.9    2859.1    184.1    6783.2    555.0
 9/30/2002    3553.2    213.9    2675.1    206.9    6228.2    420.8
 9/28/2001    3339.3    -66.0    2468.2    199.3    5807.5    133.3
 9/28/2000    3405.3   -230.8    2268.9    248.7    5674.2     17.9
 9/30/1999    3636.1    -97.8    2020.2    227.8    5656.3    130.1
 9/30/1998    3733.9    -55.8    1792.3    168.9    5526.2    113.0
 9/30/1997    3789.7             1623.5             5413.1

Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt,
        online at http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm

As can be seen in the last column, the total debt increased $574 billion in the fiscal year that just ended, over $20 billion MORE than it increased during the prior fiscal year. According to the third column, the debt borrowed from the public did increase $242 billion, $52 billion less than last year. However, this ignores the hundreds of billions being borrowed from the trust funds, especially the Social Security trust fund. From those, the government borrowed over $72 billion more than last year, increasing the total borrowing by over $20 billion. Hence, the true deficit problem is not getting better and is currently caused by the general fund, not by entitlements.