While going through some papers at my desk tonight, I came across a clipping from the June 10, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

It would have been fairly easy to overlook the heading “Treasury Securities Sales Set,” as the U.S. Treasury is continually selling more bonds to finance our growing national debt, and the details of these transactions rarely make for interesting reading material.

However, the text of this particular notice was actually quite shocking.

The Treasury plans to sell $22 billion of five-day cash management bills Tuesday. The bills will be dated June 11, 2008, and will mature June 16, 2008.

Securities such as 26-week bills, 10-year notes, and 30-year bonds are all fairly common government debt instruments. But this was the first I had ever heard of five-day cash management bills.

June 15th is the deadline for payment of second-quarter estimated taxes, which makes it an important payday for the government. Corporations and individuals not subject to federal tax withholding must make quarterly payments based on their estimated tax liabilities, and these payments are due on the 15th day of April, June, September, and January.

In other words, the U.S. Treasury was selling these five-day cash management bills because the government was running low on cash and needed a short-term loan to keep going until payday.

It’s fair to say that people who seek payday loans are not usually in the best of financial circumstances. In fact, that’s pretty much an understatement, and in most cases, people who start taking these loans often end up making a bad situation worse.

So it’s a scary thought that the government continues to spend at such an alarming rate that payday loans would be necessary to keep things going, especially when these loans are in the magnitude of $22 billion.