(CNNMoney.com) -- You've probably heard about the country's giant debt load - $12 trillion and rising. Did you know you can help reduce it?Actually you wouldn't be reducing it. You'd be sending some more money to Washington for pols to piss away.
Under a little-known law enacted in 1961, Uncle Sam accepts tax-deductible contributions to pay down the country's debt.
Not that the Treasury Department does much to publicize the program.
You can find it under the header "Accepting Gifts" in the U.S. Code. Or, if you're not an avid reader of dusty legal books, you can check the FAQ section on the Web site of the Bureau of Public Debt, an agency within Treasury. Or flip to page 91 of the IRS' 2009 Instruction Booklet for Form 1040.
Contributions made are typically small -- under $100. But there have been a few humdingers over the years.
| Humdinger? Not a word commonly used in Financial Section articles. |
For fiscal year 2009, all donations totaled just over $3 million. That's well more than what was donated in any single year in the decade prior. But it's far less than the nearly $21 million collected in 1994.