[MikeSmith]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...QXI_story.html

“I love my country. I don’t want it in debt like this. I don’t want it having a financial crisis,” said Jane Olive, a retired teacher in Las Vegas who sent $100 to the PO box this month.

But the contributions don’t specifically go to pay off existing debt. The government deposits them in the Treasury Department’s general fund, in essence the government’s main checking account.

“The gifts go toward funding the federal government, not to pay off the debt,” said Mckayla Braden, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of the Public Debt.

Since the contributions can reduce the amount of money the government would otherwise have to borrow to cover its expenses, federal officials stress they are complying with the 50-year-old law enabling the public to give gifts to lower the debt. “The government doesn’t have to borrow more,” Braden said.

Some contributors feel misled.

“I’m very disappointed,” Olive said after learning from a reporter that her gift will go into the general fund. She had felt so strongly about helping get the United States out of hock that she had e-mailed friends and relatives, urging them to make similar donations. Some did. But now, she said, “I can’t encourage my friends to sacrifice extra money.”

Since President John. F. Kennedy signed the law into effect in June 1961, people have donated about $81 .7 million to help retire the public debt, federal records show.

Leila Gardunia donated $200 on Tuesday. That very day, the public debt accrued about $704 million in interest, according to the Treasury’s Web site, making her gift equivalent to about two-sevenths of one ten-thousandth of one percent of just one day’s interest. But for Gardunia, a stay-at-home mom with four children, the math isn’t as important as the message her gifts sends to Washington.

“A lot of them are doing it out of patriotism and their love for America,” she added.