The national debt is currently at $18.15 trillion. But the new deal lifting the debt ceiling allows the Treasury Department to borrow another $1.5 trillion by the end of Obama’s time in office in January 2017. Thus, he will be leaving office with the national debt having nearly doubled.
Obama came into office with a national debt of $10.6 trillion after eight years of President George W. Bush. Obama administration officials criticized Bush for running up about $4 trillion over his time in office. Obama will have hiked the debt by nearly $10 trillion.
Former House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican who helped broker the deal with Obama, insisted that the increases were offset by $112 billion in spending cuts. Meanwhile, Obama said the agreement “is paid for in a responsible, balanced way.”
But many budget analysts disagree and say reversing the sequester — the series of automatic, across-the-board cuts implemented in 2013 — and hiking spending will be harmful to the country.
“Congress and the president have just agreed to undo one of the only successful fiscal restraint mechanisms in a generation,” Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union told The Washington Times. “The progress on reducing spending and the deficit has just become much more problematic.”
Source: The Blaze