Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"There definitely is a difference, although unfortunately often those terms are used interchangeably. The deficit is the annual shortfall between what the federal government spends and the revenue they bring in, and therefore, it's what the federal government has to borrow on a yearly basis. The debt is the cumulative amount of borrowing that the federal government has outstanding right now. Perhaps a better way to explain this is to think of your credit card. The deficit is what you add to your credit card balance each year but you don't pay off. So if you go out and borrow in a given year $1,000, put that on your credit card, and you don't pay that off, that would be like the federal government's annual deficit. The debt would be your current outstanding balance on the credit card, which includes not only what you put on this year but what you put on in previous years and you haven't paid off. So, for example, if you had an outstanding balance on your credit card of $10,000 that would be similar to the federal debt, which right now is not $10,000 but is $10 trillion."