Your Share of $59 Trillion

Some of the most creative minds in government are accountants. A USA Today review of federal spending found the books cooked to the tune of more than a trillion dollars.

Officially, the federal government says there was a $248 billion deficit last year. That's using those "creative" accounting ideas your government has cooked up to cook the books.

USA Today applied modern accounting principles -- and found the red ink was a lot deeper -- about $1.3 trillion. USA Today points out:

"Modern accounting requires that corporations, state governments and local governments count expenses immediately when a transaction occurs, even if the payment will be made later.

The federal government does not follow the rule, so promises for Social Security and Medicare don't show up when the government reports its financial condition."

Add up all the deficits over all the years and taxpayers owe around $59.1 trillion bucks.

You're share -- $516,348. Compare that to the $112,043 the average household owes for mortgages, car loans, and all other debt combined -- and you'll see you're a more frugal spender than your Uncle Sam. (USA Today)

Homeland Security Not Focused on Terrorists

Terrorism represented less than 0.01% of Department of Homeland Security prosecutions over the past few years.

Bush administration claims of success fighting terrorism has been boosted by lumping a tiny number of terror cases in with routine immigration cases. A case of padding the books?

The Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse tallied the numbers. They found of the more than 814,000 people DHS charged with crimes in the last three years, only 12 faced terrorism counts. And only 114 were charged with any "national security violation."

The Bush administration has claimed that the purpose of DHS is to fight terrorism. But the charges that appear to beef up DHS's terror fighting numbers are actually old-fashioned immigration cases. (CNN)