US National debt up $2 trillion on Obama's watch

The latest posting from the Treasury Department shows the national debt has increased over $2 trillion since President Obama took office.

Consider:

The debt now stands at $12.6 trillion.

On the day Obama took office it was $10.6 trillion.

President George W. Bush still holds the record for the most debt run up on his watch: $4.9 trillion.

But it took him over four years to rack up the first two trillion dollars in debt.

It has taken Obama 421 days.

But the Obama Administration routinely blames the Bush Administration for inheriting a budget surplus and turning it into years of record-breaking deficits and debt and then leaving it on the doorstep of the new president, says Mark Knoller of CBS News.

"I walked into office facing a massive deficit, most of which was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts and an expensive prescription drug program," Obama said last month in a speech to corporate executives at a Business Roundtable conference.

"When we walked in, we had a deficit of $1.3 trillion and projected debt over the course of a decade of $8 trillion," he told the CEOs on February 24th. "The lost revenue from this recession put us in an even deeper hole. And the steps we took to save the economy from depression last year have necessarily added to the deficit about $1 trillion, compared to the $8 trillion that we inherited."
The most the administration says it can do is try to slow the growth of the national debt but its own forecasts show it doesn't look promising, says Knoller:

In the 2011 federal budget released last month, the administration projects the national debt will soar ever upward to over $25 trillion in the year 2020.

The total debt will amount to more than 100 per cent of the national economy as early as 2012.

Source: Mark Knoller, National Debt Up $2 Trillion on Obama's Watch, CBS News, March 16, 2010.

For text: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000576-503544.html

For more on Federal Spending & Budget Issues: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=25

First published by the National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas and Washington, USA

FMF Policy Bulletin/ 30 March 2010

Publish date: 08 April 2010
Views: 457

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The views expressed in the article are the author’s and are not necessarily shared by the members of the Foundation. This article may be republished without prior consent but with acknowledgement to the author.

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