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Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...pending17.html

Want to know why this is important? The national debt, since 2001, has gone up nearly $3 trillian, and congress just raised the debt limit, a cap of how much debt we can go into, by ~$700 billion.

Congress raised the limit on the government's credit card to nearly $9 trillion Thursday, and lawmakers immediately went on a charge-it spree. The House approved, 348-71, $92 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for relief along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. Most of the House package, nearly $68 billion, would pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legislation would push total war costs since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly $400 billion. Before the Iraq invasion in 2003, Bush administration officials predicted costs related to the Iraq war would total less than $100 billion. The Senate, meanwhile, adopted a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint that anticipates deficits of more than $350 billion for this year and next. The spending blueprint, approved 51-49, little resembles President Bush's proposal last month for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. To the disappointment of budget hawks, the Senate's measure would break Bush's proposed caps on spending for programs such as education, low-income heating subsidies and health research. All told, senators endorsed more than $16 billion in increases above Bush's proposed $873 billion cap on spending appropriated by Congress each year. Vice President Dick Cheney was on hand for a possible tie-breaking vote, but that proved unnecessary. Senators earlier voted 52-48 to send Bush a measure that would allow the government to borrow an additional $781 billion and prevent a first-ever default on Treasury notes. As a result, the government could pay for the war in Iraq without raising taxes or cutting domestic programs. The statutory debt limit has risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.