According to the Treasury Department, the Obama debt is increasing the National Debt beyond $13.6 trillion.  The National Dept has increased more than $3 trillion due to the Obama debt added in the last 2 years.  According to the national debt clock, the current national debt stands at $13.6 trillion and climbing.

Before the Obama debt was added to the national debt, the total national debt stood at $10.63 trillion.

The Obama administration likes to blame the Bush debt.  “By the time I got into office we already had a $1.3 trillion deficit and we had exploded the national debt,” he said last month during one of his backyard chats with Americans.  However, President Obama fails to understand (or explain) who is largely to blame for the Bush deficits.  He also neglects to mention that he was in congress (although mostly campaigning for President) during the largest national deficit increases.

The President creates a budget proposal that is sent to Congress.  Congress is responsible to set the spending levels and passes the budget.  Democrats were in charge of Congress for the last two years of the Bush administration.  The Democrats could have easily cut the national deficit and national debt by cutting spending.  However, they choose to almost triple the debt.

The Bush debt is indefensible, but the American people are getting tired of hearing how Bush is to blame for all of Obama’s issues. 

The Republicans are set to take over the House and make substantial gains in the Senate.  Let us all hope that our government will stop running up the national dept by continuing to spend irresponsibly.

The national debt is the total amount of money that the US Government owes.  This differs from the budget deficit in the the budget deficit  is the difference between what the government takes in through taxes and what it spends in a given year.  In years when their is a deficit, the national debt goes up.  In years with a surplus, the national debt can go down if Congress chooses to apply the surplus to retiring debt.

According the the Congressional Budget Office, the current level of budget deficits predicted for the next 10 years will drive the national debt to over $20 trillion by 2019.

 As reported by CPHQ roughly 6 months ago, the national debt  passed the $12 trillion mark for the first time.  At this pace, the national debt will top $14 trillion before the end of 2010.  This is expected to continue to grow higher in 2011 as the CBO and the White House predict a 2011 Obama budget deficit of over $1 trillion.

According to the national debt clock, that $13 trillion breaks down to $42k per citizen and over $118k per tax payer.  The interest payments alone amount over $195 billion.

Over the last few years, Americans have learned the hard way the taking on too much debt can lead to personal ruin.  The US government needs to learn from American’s personal mistakes and take steps to dramatically reduce the Obama deficits and begin to pay down the debt before it becomes entirely unsustainable.

Putting the federal deficit in terms that Americans can understand, when Obama entered office, the public debt amounted to roughly $56,000 per household.    Today it is $72,000 per household and is headed to more than $170,000 per household in 2020.

According to the CBO, the deficit will equal almost 90% of GDP in 2010. 

It is important to note that the deficit adds to the national debt and creates a death spiral where additional debt adds to the spending that must happen each year to cover the interest payments on that debt.  This spiral puts additional pressure towards increasing deficits.

It is also important to note that deficits are mostly in control of the President and Congress.  For 2010, the Obama administration and Congress chose to spend over $1.4 trillion more than the government makes from taxes and other revenues.  To reduce or eliminate the deficit, the government needs to plan to spend less than what it believes it will take in.  Currently, the government is planning to spend far more each year than what it takes in.

Americans have just started to come out of a debt crisis caused by Americans and businesses taking on more debt than they can handle.  Now the government is making the same mistakes by tripling the budget deficit and pushing the country further and further into debt.

If deficit spending is the way out of an economic downturn, as leftist economists like Paul Krugman keep telling us, then one way to characterize President Obama’s approach to reviving the ailing economy is “killing it with kindness.”

Another is “tough love” – not the kind where you force hard choices and self-discipline, but the kind where you shoot the poor beast to put it out of its misery.

James Clyburn, House Majority Whip, recently crystallized the Democrats’ position on fiscal responsibility when he announced, “We’re not going to save our way out of this recession. We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.”

Here are some fun facts about Obama’s proposed federal budgets over the next decade:

- The projected deficit for Obama’s 2010 budget is $1.6 trillion, which is 10% larger than the 2009 deficit, which was three times as big as the record 2008 deficit under President Bush.

- The projected 2010 deficit is 10 times as large as the deficit for Bush’s 2007 budget, the latter of which included funding for the troop surge that won the war in Iraq. Nearly matching our accomplishment in Iraq, the White House Travel Office has approved a trip for Obama to go to Cambridge, Massachusetts in November to get a Democratic dogcatcher elected in Harvard Square.

- The projected 2010 deficit will render our national debt 13% bigger on the last day of this year than it is today. Projected 2010-11 deficits will cause the debt to swell 23% bigger than it is now. By 2020, the debt will be twice as big as it is today.

- By 2013 the deficit will recede to $700 billion, a “mere” half of the 2009 deficit, then ratchet up again to $1 trillion by 2020. Even this will happen only if Congress agrees to drastic spending cuts before 2013, which it has already expressed strong resistance to doing.

- All of these numbers are conditional on what many private sector economists call overly optimistic expectations held by the current administration regarding growth of the economy.

These sobering statistics raise a number of tough questions about the measures Obama proposes to bring down the deficit-which, naturally, he will never answer satisfactorily.

For example: in his budget address on Monday, Obama stated, “Because small businesses are critical creators of new jobs and economic growth, the budget eliminates capital gains taxes for investments in small firms and includes measures to increase these firms’ access to the loans they need to meet payroll, expand their operations, and hire new workers.”

Why only small businesses? Why not medium and large businesses? Who adds more jobs to the economy-Sal’s Pizzeria, a local franchise of Linens ‘n Things, or Microsoft Corporation?

Obama proposes letting the Bush tax cuts expire for families making over $250,000 a year. He wants to impose a new tax-sorry, “financial crisis responsibility fee”-on banks and corporations who received TARP money, some of whom were forced by the administration to take it. Obama wants to strip away tax breaks from oil and gas corporations.

So why would Obama want to choke the engines of growth and job creation by saddling them with tax increases? If the absence of a $5,000 tax credit would hinder a small business from new hiring, what does he think the addition of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes to corporations would do to their hiring? Do big corporations hire workers out of the goodness of their hearts, with no concern for the bottom line?

Also, given that many of those families who make over $250,000 are headed by small business owners, how does Obama justify giving them tax credits while simultaneously increasing their taxes? Is his administration even feigning consistency here?

History shows that cutting individual and corporate tax rates increases long-term tax revenue. Obama was specifically asked about this proven fact by George Stephanopoulos during a primary debate with Hillary Clinton. Obama stated outright that even if this pattern were true, he would still favor higher taxes on the wealthy to promote “fair” taxation.

Obama is free to endorse Marxist policies if he desires, but how can he turn around and claim that his proposal to increase taxes for the wealthy is an effective way to reduce long-term deficits?

When you’re handed a hot potato such as the sickly economy – a fate Obama has reminded us of precisely eight million times since he was elected office-the responsible solution is to let it cool down.

Instead, Obama proposes to cremate it.

http://www.scottspiegel.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Spiegel
http://EzineArticles.com/?Incinerating-a-Hot-Potato&id=3694855

Today it was reported that the Obama administration blames the 10 year deficit on the current crisis and the Bush administration.  Odd that the White House would blame deficits 10 years from now on the policies of a prior administration all the while dramatically increasing spending to unprecedented levels.   Why not blame Bush 41 or Carter?

One of the most alarming facts is that the current national debt is around $11.7 trillion.  This would lead to a national debt of almost $21 trillion.  This is expected to be 75% of our entire economy.  The interest payments on that debt will severely cripple the U.S. for years to come.

The AC360 blog over at CNN did a nice job of summing up how this will be very bad for our economy.  One striking figure is that it will burden future tax payers with over $900 billion in annual interest payments.  Even if we payed back zero on the money that we are borrowing, we would have to pay $900 billion each and every year to keep the interest current.  One would question where the money is to come from.  Certainly not a 1% surcharge on wealth.

Deficits of that magnitude would be extraordinarily dangerous and irresponsible for the country. They would double the national debt, risk much higher inflation, saddle future taxpayers with annual interest payments of over $900 billion, make us even more reliant upon China as a creditor, and over time would weaken us as a great nation.

Many people are starting to question the estimating abilityof the current administration.  Aside from updating the deficit numbers by almost 30% in a few months, they also changed the estimate for the retraction in GDP from 1.2% to 2.8%.

They have also mismanaged the impact of the stimulus.  Back when the stimulus bill needed to be passed in the middle of the night, the American people were told that if we did nothing, unemployment could get as high as 8%.  With the stimulus, unemployment is now at 9.4% and expected to reach over 10%.

This doesn’t even take into account the impacts of health care reform which the CBO estimates will cost trillions.

At some point we need to decide that the federal government can not keep borrowing from the future to pay for items that special interest groups are demanding.

You also constantly hear President Obama talk about the deficit that he inherited from George Bush.  Let us just pray that we are able to do similar math with any sum that we inherit.

Recently, Steny Hoyer told UVA graduates that Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion dollar deficit.  However, last reports I saw indicated that Bush left office with a deficit somewhere between $400 and $500 trillion.  It has been in the first six months of the Obama administration that the deficit has quadrupled to over $1.85 trillion according to the CBO.

There is a great article over at hotairthat details the inconsistencies of Hoyer’s statements.  The article also includes this great chart:

The article also lays out the truth about government spending.

In fact, Congress appropriates federal spending, not the President, in our system of government.  The President can propose spending, but Congress makes the final decisions on appropriations and spending levels.

Over the last 2 years, the democrats have been in charge of how much money the government spends not the president.  The president can propose spending levels, but Congress sets the final numbers.  When the Republicans where in charge, they were also reckless with our money.  However, Obama and the democrats have reach unprecedented levels of debt.  Some would even say unsustainable.

Eventually, the American people will wake up and demand that their government stop spending money when the government is broke.  In the end, we all have to pay for this spending and not just through some extra taxes on a minority of top earners.