It’s official — the United States national debt topped $16 trillion Tuesday, Sept. 4 morning. It has been flirting with the $16 trillion mark for a month or so. It is now official — we are in debt to the tune of $51,074.32 per citizen. That’s every man, woman and child in the Unites States of America. No, one cannot pay ahead and consider one’s debt is paid while the debt clock continues to balloon.
A few other facts to consider: we are spending $3.88 billion a day. We’ve been doing that since Sept. 28, 2007.
The national debt is the amount of money the U.S. government owes. The federal government’s deficit is the annual amount the government spends versus the amount of money the U.S. treasury takes in during a given year.
Our national debt has been growing steadily since the 1970s. It took a dramatic surge during the 2000s. That’s when our nation went to war against terrorism.
During the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, the national debt rose $4.899 trillion. Bush’s last day in office the debt was at $10.626 trillion.
In the first three years of President Barack Obama, the debt has grown to its current level of $16 trillion.
Debt had been an issue as far back as Reagan and Clinton. “According to U.S. Treasury figures at Debt to the Penny, on January 20, 1993, as Bill Clinton took office, the total outstanding public debt was $4.1 trillion. On January 19, 2001, that same figure had increased to $5.7 trillion,” according to the National Review.
So, it went from $5.7 trillion when Clinton left office to $10.6 trillion when Bush left and is now at $16 trillion. At this pace, the United States will be at $20 trillion before the next president leaves office. That is of course, if we continue to increase our debt at $1.6 trillion per year.
It’s clear that Republican and Democratic presidents have been spending more than we are capable of paying off. The only president to reduce the debt during his term in office was Clinton. However, after reducing the debt, it did rise before he left office as is pointed out earlier.
What’s the solution? The easy answer is to stop spending what we don’t have. The difficult part of that answer is whose ox is gored?
Keith Hansen
Comments (3)
Add commentLet's also start being honest about what needs to be charged
to the debt. If we're all so blazing miffed about the debt, why are we not honest about how expensive our wars are/were? Why were we silent about how much the Bush tax cuts cost?
P.S.: " Feel a cold coming on, take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!" If the Romney/Ryan ticket wants more wars, how in the name of .... will we pay for it?? If Romney/Ryan wants to give even more trickle-down tax cuts to the most wealthy folks in our country -- how do we pay for this?
As a middle-class person, I'd prefer that we don't pick the pockets of middle class to pay for another tax cut for the rich. Just a thought, Mr. Hansen.
Mittster & Ryan have already proposed the Final Solution/GOP
Its already spelled out in the new and "improved" GOP platform.
Cut capital gains taxes from the current reduced (Bush Tax Cut) level of 15 % to ZERO. Therefore the Mittsters effective tax rate goes from 13% to almost 0.
The trickle down economics created will allow all those job creators to float their rather large boats and assuming they are loaded 2 X 2 , all you regular bible readers know the rest of the story. AMEN !
Medicare & the Affordable Health Care Act wont have any customers for those vouchers until long after the big flood subsides .
lets get back to reality
the basic fact, if you spend more than you take in you will go bankrupt its as simple as that, i dont care if its personal finances, buisness finances, or government finances. dems want to tax the "rich" republicans say the want to cut spending yet they dont dems want to grow governnment and have done so, but republicans do a good job at growing government too the fact is spending has to be cut or the country will go bankrupt there is no middle ground, weather taxes go up or down is a moot point because at the current rate of spending you can take every dollar from every man woman and child in the U.S. and it would solve nothing