National Debt Skyrockets Under Obama, Far Faster Than Under Bush

CBS News finally reports the obvious: the national debt increased more in President Obama’s first three years in office than in the entire eight years of the Bush administration. Earlier, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that Obama’s policies would increase the national debt by $9.7 trillion. National and state debt figures are massively understated by their failure to include unfunded pension obligations and healthcare entitlements. Americans now owe $189,000 each in national debt and unfunded entitlements. That’s 885 percent of our economy’s size (or GDP), exceeding Greece’s debts and unfunded liabilities, which amount to 875 percent of its economy (although Greece is worse off than the U.S. now since its economic growth is lower due to factors like greater corruption and a more rapidly-aging population, and its borrowing costs are higher). In the 2008 campaign, then-Senator Obama promised a “net spending cut,” but as soon as he was elected, he proposed substantial spending increases, resulting in the largest budget deficits in history.

Massive budget deficits and mushrooming pension and health-care entitlements increased the federal government’s long-term obligations by $4.2 trillion in 2011 — more than three times the $1.3 trillion official figure for the federal budget deficit, noted a Washington Post article. Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which benefited the public-employee unions that receive lucrative unfunded pensions and health benefits, will actually shrink the size of the economy in the long run, the Congressional Budget Office says, although it temporarily pumped up employment among government employees. (By contrast, two economists argue that it wiped out the jobs of a million private-sector employees by diverting money from the private sector to the public sector.)