National Debt Climbs to Over $18 Trillion Dollars

National Debt Climbs to Over $18 Trillion Dollars

As politics and media have continued to obsess about Ferguson, a very serious thing has occurred.

Our national debt topped $18 trillion dollars. That’s more than our GDP.

John Hinderaker of Powerline reports:

Federal Debt Soars to Over $18 Trillion

A year or so ago, the Democrats started telling us that the national debt was no longer an issue. This was based on the fact that the deficit was only around half what it was during President Obama’s first few years in office. The fiscal year 2014 deficit came in at *only* $483 billion, a cause for rejoicing in Washington. This represents the smallest deficit as a percentage of GDP since the George W. Bush administration.

Still, $483 billion exceeds any deficit ever racked up during the administration of any president other than Barack Obama. (Don’t try to play the silly game of attributing the Democratic Congress’s FY 2009 deficit, which among other things included spending under the failed Obama/Reid/Pelosi “stimulus,” to President Bush.)

Word came today that the national debt now exceeds $18 trillion, a little more than the GDP of the United States.

Remember all the times Obama said he was going to cut our deficit in half?

Dan Spencer of RedState does:

Our ‘Irresponsible’ and ‘Unpatriotic’ $18 Trillion National Debt

In 2004, when the deficit was $413 billion and the national debt was $7,419,244,676,835.15 or $7.4 trillion, an amount about equal to the amount Obama has added to our national debt so far, Obama said the “monstrous federal deficit” was an “enormous problem.” On July 3, 2008, presidential candidate Obama said that adding $4 trillion in debt during President Bush’s then six and one-half year presidency was  “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.”  Nevertheless, President Obama added more than $7.4 trillion to the national debt in almost six years.

President Obama promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first time. He made that promise at least five times:

1. February 23, 2009: Obama Pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.
2. February 24, 2009: Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.
3. May 26, 2009: Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office
4. December 8, 2009: Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.
5. February 14, 2011: Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.

Just more lies. Lies like Obama’s oft-repeated line that if Americans liked the health insurance plans they were on, they could keep them after the implementation of ObamaCare.

Zero Hedge provides this inconvenient truth:

5 Complete Lies About America’s New $18 Trillion Debt Level

There’s so much misinformation and propaganda about this; let’s examine some of the biggest lies out there about the US debt:

1) “They can get it under control.”

What a massive lie. Politicians have been saying for decades that they’re going to cut spending and get the debt under control.

FACT: The last time the US debt actually decreased from one fiscal year to the next was back in 1957 during the EISENHOWER administration.

FACT: For the last several years, the US government has been spending roughly 90% of its ENTIRE tax revenue just to pay for mandatory entitlement programs and interest on the debt.

This leaves almost nothing for practically everything else we think of as government.

2) “The debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.”

This is probably the biggest lie of all. Two of the Social Security trust funds alone (OASI and DI) own $2.72 trillion of US debt.

The federal government owes this money to current and future beneficiaries of those trust funds, i.e. EVERY SINGLE US CITIZEN ALIVE.

I fail to see the silver lining here. How is it somehow ‘better’ if the government defaults on its citizens as opposed to, say, banks?

3) “They can always ‘selectively default’ on the debt”

Another lie. People think that the US government can pick and choose who it pays.

They could make a bing stink about China, for example, and then choose to default on the $2 trillion in debt that’s owed to the Chinese.

Nice try. But this would rock global financial markets and destroy whatever tiny shred of credibility the US still has.

Read the rest of the list here.

Finally, do you have any idea how big just one trillion is?

Watch this video:

Featured image via YouTube.

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