Trillion, Republican | featured news

The Tampa Bay Times Forum has a new kind of scoreboard -- a "national debt clock" that is ticking up to $16 trillion. The ever-ticking clock, hanging above the delegates to the Republican convention, is designed to be "a compelling visual reinforcing the desperate need for new fiscal leadership in the White House," says the Republican National Committee.

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president s debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.