How fast the national debt has spiraled! In July 1972 the Herald carried an editorial supporting President Nixon’s appeal to Congress to hold the line on Eolitically-inspired spending in t e election year. Nixon had just asked Congress for legislation temporarily extending the $450 billion ceiling on the national debt. So how much is the national debt today – a little over seven years later? Over $800 billion and going up! Annual payments on interest alone, on the debt, exceed $50 billion. The Herald has deplored many times our soaring national debt. Planned deficits of $30 to $60 billion are a shame for a so-called rich country like the United States. In 1976, candidate Jimmy Carter promised to balance the budget by 1979. This year President Carter presented a 1980 budget with a $29 billion deficit and $12 billion more in “off budget” items. Large segments of the publice do not agree with him that the budget is ”austere” and are seeking a constitutional amendment against deficit spending. Resolutions have been passed y 30 states – and if four more act, Congress will be required to call a constitutional convention on the question. Be that move as it may, the record certainly backs up the need for some form of drastic action. Jimmy Carter, the present Congress and the administration are just perpetuating a trend of loriglstanding. e recor shows, as a matter of fact, that the national debt, in modern-day decades, has climbed during both Democratic and republican administrations and in peacetime as well as in time of war. Back in 1915, the debt totaled only $1,191,264,068. Fifteen years later – after participation in World War I and following various federal ups and downs – the debt was at $16,185,309,B31. Then the big spending really got going. With programs designed to shake off the depression of the thirties sparking the outlays, the debt went to $42,967,531,038 by 1940 and to $48,961,443,536 the next year. World War II sparked the upsurge to $72,422,445,116 in 1942, $201,003,387,221 in 1944, and $269,422,099,173 in 1946. That would be the high water mark, everybody thought, with the per capita debt figuring at about $1911. Indeed, the debt was cut back to $256.2%,383,109 in 1947 and to $252,292,2%,513 in 1948. The three-year Korean War was instrumental in a new upswing, but that didn’t end the s iral and despite some years of balanced budgets the debt reached $288,970,931%,610 in 1961 and $336 billion in 1967. It has never stopped burgeoning, the recent high inflation years sending the total to monstrous proportions. The effects of inflation are one of the cruelest aspects of the overspending. Between 1946 and 1961, Congress managed seven deficits and seven surpluses with an overall approximate balance and low inflation, Readers Digest noted recently, “But in the 19 years since, Congress has balanced the budget only once, in 1969, and the net deficit over those years has been a staggering $377 billion.” The deficit spending trend has caused the public to lose confidence in the national leaders. The Associated Press found in a February poll that “distrust of politicians is so deep that Americans do not believe their elected officials will act,” the Digest reported. “Seventy percent said politicians will not work to wipe out the deflcit.” Holding the spending line is a complex problem that will require firm resolve, considerable sacrifice, and more unity of purpose than is being shown in congressional circles as solons debate the various asigects of the problem. Meantime, e efforts of determined grass roots groups is to be commended. If and when balanced budgets are achieved on a sustained basis, crusading citizens certainly will have eamed a big chunk of the credit.