WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department said Tuesday that the national debt has topped $16 trillion, the result of chronic government deficits that have poured more than $50,000 worth of red ink onto federal ledgers for every man, woman and child in the United States.
The news was greeted with a round of press releases from Barack Obama’s GOP rivals, who used the grim-but-expected news to criticize the president for the government’s fiscal performance over his 3 1/2 years in office. Obama has presided over four straight years of trillion dollar-plus deficits after inheriting a weak economy from his predecessor, George W. Bush.
“We can no longer push off the tough decisions until tomorrow,” said No. 2 House Republican Eric Cantor, R-Va. “It’s time to address the serious fiscal challenges we face and stop spending money we don’t have.” Last summer, Cantor dropped out of a set of budget talks hosted by Vice President Joe Biden, citing the insistence of the White House on tax increases to help close deficits that require the government to borrow 33 cents of every dollar it spends.
The spiraling debt means that lawmakers and the eventual winner of the White House in November will have to pass a law early next year to raise the government’s borrowing cap from the current ceiling of $16.39 trillion. Passing such legislation last year proved enormously difficult and the nation’s credit rating suffered.
First, however, lawmakers will try during a post-election lame duck session to renew Bush-era tax cuts and head off a round of forced budget austerity as automatic budget cuts are scheduled in January to slam both the Pentagon and domestic programs. Those cuts were required by another failed set of budget talks last fall by a bipartisan “supercommittee.”
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said: “This debt will not only be a liability for our kids and grandkids, but economists also tell us that it will limit economic growth and kill millions of jobs now and in the future.” Portman was a mem-ber of last year’s failed supercommittee, which deadlocked over taxes and cuts to popular benefit programs.
The debt topped the $16 trillion mark on Friday.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said the government will likely reach its debt limit at the end of the year. However, Geithner has said he will be able to employ various “extraordinary measures” to keep the government operating until sometime early next year. Geithner would need to use these measures if Congress, as expected, fails to tackle the debt limit by year’s end.
Last year’s prolonged impasse between the GOP-dominated House and Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House contributed to a move by the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to lower America’s AAA bond rating for the first time in the country’s history, nudging it down a notch to AA+ for long-term securities.
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney promises sharp spending cuts and a balanced budget by 2020 if he wins the White House, but has provided little detail about how that might be accomplished.
For his part, Obama has declined to tackle the spiraling growth of benefit programs like Medicare and the Medicaid health program for the poor and disabled. His proposals to hike taxes on upper income earners have been repeatedly rejected by Republicans, but he promises to insist on them if he wins re-election.
Obuma has FAILED to tackle anything but golfing and going on vacation…An empty chair…
Responding to midcoast conservative.
From CBS–
Jimmy Carter took 79 days in 4 years.
Bill Clinton took 152 days in 8 years.
Ronald Reagan took 335 days in 8 years.
George Bush Sr. took 543 days in 4 years.
In their first year in office:
Obama – 26 days
Clinton – 19 days
George W. Bush – 69 days
George W. Bush eight year totals:
487 days at Camp David
490 days at Crawford Ranch
43 days at Kennebunkport Compound
Total: 1020 days, more than 1/3rd of his presidency.
Oh, those pesky facts again. Facts to a conservative are like daylight to a vampire! lol.
Like the FACT that Obama has incured 5.3 Trillion in debt in 43 months? or the FACT that Bush incured 4.9 Trillion in 96 months? Or the FACT that Democrat controlled congress spent much more than the Republicans in less time when they had the majority?
At this rate we will be bankrupt in a decade.
Getting this under control has to be this countries priority or this country will be a memory in the history books.
Click the link for verification
http://treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
Here is another fact. Obama didn’t incur 5.3 trillion in debt in 43 months, the nation did. Bush didn’t incur 4.9 trillion in debt in 96 months, the nation did. I do not know how much control that you think the president has over matters of national debt, but it would be naive to think it was much. This is a national problem. Pointing the finger at one individual only detracts from the business at hand, lowering our debt as a nation. It is not a Democrat or a Republican thing either. They are both guilty of fiddling while Rome burns. I think that we need a consumer tax of 20%. 10% would go to running the nation, living within our means, and the other 10% should go directly, unmolested, towards paying down our debt.
The house and senate are responsible for drafting the budget, or in the case for over the last 1100 days not drafting the budget, but the president has to sign off on it. I agree it is not a Dem or Rep. issue, they ALL need to be fired every last crooked one of them. I’d go along with the consumer tax if the income tax went away.
I like a consumer tax because it is each according to one’s ability. I also take comfort in knowing that if some person with money wants to spend 100k on a purse or a bottle of wine, they would be kicking in another 20k to fund government and retire our debt.
This country is so screwed and most don’t even realize it. This figure doesn’t include the over $1 trillion in state debt, the almost $2 trillion in local govt. debt, all told the Federal, state and local governments plus the individual citizen debt in this country is about $57 Trillion. Not to mention the $120 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities. $177 Trillion if you add the two together, ALL of the money from the rich, middle class, and the poor plus all of the assets in this country wouldn’t even make a dent in the debt.
I don’t care who gets to be president this year, or 4 years from now, nothing is going to change. This country is bankrupt.
$16 trillion dollars? No problem, we can just borrow more from the COMMUNIST Chinese. All we have to do is continue to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, embrace COMMUNISM, and sign right here.