By Rick Gustaf, Bigelow
In response to Douglas Bouman’s claim that President Obama will pay off the national debt by 2017 (which is laughable), I know facts can be a pesky thing, but this is just one article that I found (at factcheck.org) and the facts in it can be backed up by many sources.
“The federal debt has already grown more during Obama’s first six years than under all previous U.S. presidents combined, at least in nominal dollars with no adjustment for inflation. The debt owed to the public stands at about $13 trillion, an increase of 106 percent since Obama first took office. Total debt, counting money the government owes to itself, stands at $18.1 trillion, up 70 percent. Both debt figures continue to grow, though less rapidly than during Obama’s first few years when annual deficits topped $1 trillion for four years running.
“The U.S. finished the most recent fiscal year with a deficit of $483 billion. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that unless Congress acts to trim future spending or raise future taxes, or some combination of both, those annual deficits will soon be rising again. The most recent ‘baseline’ budget projection, which CBO issued in August, forecasts that under current law the deficit will rise above half a trillion in fiscal 2016 and hit $960 billion within a decade.”
I’m also not sure about the claim that Obama’s budgets are responsible for our new found prosperity because his last budget was voted down 99-1 in the Senate and, last I checked, there is more than one Democrat in the Senate. Back to my original point: Bush added about $4 trillion to the national debt, which is nothing to brag about, but he is a piker compared to Obama, who has added over $9 trillion.
All of this quibbling over a few dozens zeros isn’t going to help anything if this country can’t get its fiscal house in order and we stop strapping our grandkids and their grandkids with a mountainous debt. Please find out what your politicians stand for instead of voting for someone just because they have a “D” or an “R” behind their name - and follow them when they get into office to make sure they do what they say they are going to do and call them out if they don’t.
