Under Obama, US debt has increased by $5.4 trillion from $10.6 trillion to current level, an increase of 51%
By Sam Rolley – USLiberty.com
Sept 05, 2012 – On Tuesday, the Democratic National Convention got under way as a historical landmark in American history took place: U.S. debt reached $16 trillion.
The debt racked up by American leaders represents 105 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, making it larger than the entire economy. Currently the GDP of the U.S. is $15.3 trillion.
The national debt has tripled under the previous two Presidential administrations. Under President Bush, the debt increased from about $5.4 trillion to $10.6 trillion in eight years from 2000 to 2008. But it took President Obama only four years to add a similar amount to the national debt.
“This is a grim landmark for the United States,” Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. “That’s more government debt per person than Portugal, Italy, Spain or Greece. Yet President Obama seems strangely unconcerned.”
The message coming from the DNC will likely downplay the enormous debt burden, as Democratic operatives contend that too rapidly attacking the massive debt could create a spiraling economic downturn.
“What’s necessary is to stabilize the debt and then work from there,” Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod said during a weekend interview. “You can’t balance the budget in the short term, because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy.”
Obama’s debt-reduction plan calls for lowering the national deficit to the tune of $4 trillion over the course of the next decade, but it is often criticized for a reliance on hefty tax hikes and the lack of a long-term debt solution.
“The problem with the Obama plan is basically that it doesn’t contain a long-term strategy for tackling the debt, which they will concede,” Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition (a group in Arlington, Va., that advocates deficit reduction) told Bloomberg.
On January 20, 2009, the day of Obama’s inauguration, the U.S. national debt was $10.626 trillion, per records of the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt. It continues to grow at a rate of about $4.5 billion per day. For more information about U.S. debt, go to www.USDebtClock.org
