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 news of the Obama deficit comes at a bad time for Democrats who hope to keep hold of Congress.  Polls predict that Republicans will take the house in the November elections and will come close to taking the Senate.

According to US Debt Clock, the current national debt stands at over $13.5 trillion and climbing.  With the CBO forecast for the Obama deficit for 2011, the national debt could top $15 trillion going into 2012.

Regardless of who controls Congress in 2011, reducing the deficit will be difficult.  Republicans favor cutting government spending to reduce the budget deficit while Democrats favor additional taxes.

The President is claiming that without all of the deficit spending, the economy would be in worse shape.  However, this argument discounts the damage to future years as we continue to borrow money to fund additional spending and print money to pay off the debt.

When the economy picks up again, there will be pressure to raise interest rates.  The higher interest rates on the national debt will mean that the American people will be on the hook for higher interest payments to avoid defaulting on debt payments.

Americans need to remember the issues that excessive consumer debt caused in the recent past.  The same issues will be faced by the entire nation as the debt and the interest on that debt continues to climb.

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.

This week, the results are in and can be found at the You Cut Budget site.

The first winning budget cut is to remove $2.5 billion from the federal budget in the New Non-Reformed Welfare Program. 

According to the You Cut site, “The program was recently created to incentivize states to increase their welfare caseloads without requiring able-bodied adults to work, get job training, or otherwise prepare to move off of taxpayer assistance. Reforming the welfare program was one of the great achievements of the mid 1990s, saving taxpayers billions of dollars and ending the cycle of dependency on welfare. This new program, created in 2009 is a backdoor way to undo those reforms. The program currently costs approximately $2.5 billion a year. (Also proposed as part of the RSC Sunset Caucus.)”

Later this week, house Republicans will attempt to bring this up for a vote.  As voters, we need to pay attention to who pushes to keep this spending in the budget and who votes to remove it.  Although this is only a tiny cut to spending, perhaps it will lead to further cuts of  wasteful spending from the federal budget.

Update 4/9/2011: Follow this link to find all of the You Cut Federal Budget Results.

In a recent interview in the Richmond Times Dispatch, House minority Whip Eric Cantor said the program is designed to challenge “Congress’ culture of spending” by engaging the public. “The American people will have a direct input on what they feel is the best way for the government to save money, each and every week,” said Cantor.

The YOUCUT program is a website where Americans are presented with programs to cut from the federal budget each week. The budget item with the highest votes is put into a bill and brought to the floor of the house. The website will track who votes for and against bringing the bill up for a vote.

Liberal groups are blasting the program as an election year gimmick.   Conservative blogs are questioning the impact since some of this weeks cuts are so small. 

However, it is about time that somebody in Washington understands that most Americans are fed up with ever increasing spending and huge budget deficits.  And as some bloggers have pointed out, when you cut budget items as little as a few hundred million, it does not put much of a dent in this year’s almost $1.4 trillion budget deficit.  However, some of the cuts are for spending that it so wasteful, it will be interesting who tries to block removing the spending.

This week’s options allow for voters to pick from 4 options ranging from $1 million to $2.6 billion.

Click the following to see the first week of You Cut budget results.

You can access You Cut at http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/.  Stay tuned in to the You Cut web site to see the results and who in congress voted against cutting federal spending.

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

As pointed out at Hot Air, the government is reporting that Social Security is running a surplus of $92 billion.  However, the government accounting includes interest payments of $120 billion on the debt owed to Social Security leading to an “on paper” surplus.

However, the $120 billion in interest payments are being paid by IOUs.  This means that $120 billion of Social Security revenue is only a promise to pay from the federal government.

Social Security will either have to send out $28 billion in IOUs to Social Security recipients or receive at $28 billion bailout from the tax payers.

Further compounding the problem is that the current figures do not include $13 billion in $250 checks that the Obama administration wants to send to Social Security recipients.

For years the federal government has relied upon Social Security surpluses to cover part of the federal budget deficit.  Now that Social Security is out of cash, this isn’t possible.

How does this impact you?

With American families struggling to make ends meet, the government continues planning to run a spending deficit putting the country trillions more into debt.  This eventually needs to be paid down.

Americans need to remember that a federal budget deficit is the difference between what the government takes in and what it spend in one year.  The national debt is the permenent number that we owe and must pay interest on to keep current.  The spending deficit each year adds to the national debt.

Putting in simple terms, the government at least needs to make the minimum payment each month on their credit card to stay current.  In the case of the Government, the minimum payment continues to grow each month as the balance continues to grow.

The American Taxpayer will soon not be able to bail out the government or cover the interest payments on the debt that the government continues to grow.  What will happen when America goes bankrupt?

According to a post at Hot Air, the United States national debt was $12,031,299,186,290.07 at 3:00 pm.  This indicates that it took the Obama administration less than 8 months to add $1 trillion to the US national debt.

The 2009 budget deficit was $1.42 trillion or 3 times the 2008 budget deficit.

Despite what the White House says on TV, its report indicates that the US national debt at the end of  this fiscal year could top $14 trillion by adding $2 trillion more in the next 12 months.  The report goes on to indicate that by end of the decade, the United States national debt will hit $24.5 trillion in 2019 which will exceed the projected GDP.

America is headed toward an economic catastrophe as our politicians seek to gather power today by mortgaging our and our children’s future.  To many, the promises of our politicians sound good, but most Americans don’t think about paying for those promises.

As Americans, we need to demand that our government stop spending away our future to gain power today.

The government took in $135 billion in October, but the Obama administration spent $312 billion delivering a $177 billion budget deficit.

Most Americans don’t understand the trouble large budget deficits can cause.  In September this year, the American tax payer payed $17 billion in interest payments on the national debt that we have accumulated as a nation.  That doesn’t even address the principle on the roughly $12 trillion of national debt the American tax payer is on the hook to pay off.

To make it easier to understand those numbers, consider that $17 billion in interest equals $567 million a day in interest payments or $24 million an hour.  Now consider that taking into account the budget deficit projections for the next 10 years, by 2019 the national debt is expected to double.  This would mean the American tax payer would be on the hook for over $1 billion a day in interest payments.

They nation is headed toward a similar situation that faced many Americans in the last few years.  Many Americans ran up debt by purchasing homes they couldn’t afford (aided by banks and the government) and spending more than they made in income.  Many faced losing their homes and bankruptcy and had to be bailed out by the American tax payer.

When the government is facing not being able to meet its interest and debt obligations, who will bail us out then?