Now, with just a few more donors ...

January 25, 2006 - To put the national debt in perspective, consider first what you might do with $1.1 million, were someone to bequeath it to you. How far would it go toward paying off your debts?

Now think about the $1.1 million that an Ohio resident, Margaret Elizabeth Taylor, bequeathed to help pay the national debt when she died Nov. 9. Her generosity and desire to help pay down the national deficit are noble. We wish those in our federal government would demonstrate the same desire.

Instead, the federal government would need more than 7.36 million gifts of $1.1 million each to cover the entire $8.1 trillion national debt. We doubt that many gifts of that size are coming, since The Associated Press found that Bureau of the Public Debt records show Americans donated a total of $1.5 million toward that purpose last year. Oh, well - at that rate, we only need 5.4 million years of donations to pay off our national debt.