President Barrack Obama will depart from office on January 20, 2017, when the next president is elected. Since he took office, the total debt of the federal government has already increased by $7,525,761,885,381.30 — rising from $10,626,877,048,913.08 on Jan. 20, 2009 to $18,152,638,934,294.38 on Oct. 23, 2015.
He usually doesn’t prefer to address or discuss this issue. Obamas latest agreement with the Congress regarding spending will defer the country’s debt limit, allowing the exchequer to borrow $1.5 trillion by the end of his tenure. Keeping in view the current debt situation, the latter will amount to about a $20 trillion mark when he retires from office.
“The Boehner-Obama spending agreement would allow for unlimited borrowing by the Treasury until March 2017,” said Paul Winfree, director of economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation. “This deal piles on billions of dollars to the national debt by increasing spending over the next three years and then not paying for it for a decade — with half of the offsets not occurring until 2025.”
It should obviously be kept in mind that the Congress is equally responsible for costly debt. Moreover, a few factors and figures to be noted since Obama first took office include the economy developing almost nearly 8.4 million jobs, number of job openings has increased, 15 million fewer people lack health insurance, stock prices doubled and corporate profits are at record levels. Although the poverty rate is 1.6 times higher, rate of home ownership has dropped and the overall federal debt owed to the public has doubled. There is no doubt that the debt even when calculated as a percentage of the thriving economy has expanded drastically.
“Debt payments comprise 6 percent of all spending now, but will more than double to 13 percent in 2025,” said Demian Brady, The National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s director of research. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office “cites two main causal factors: an expected eventual rise in interest rates, and the continuing expansion of the federal debt.”
Earlier steps that were taken by Obama with respect to spending at most amounted to about $203 billion to the fiscal year 2009; spending levels that were set before he took office. It should be noted however, that the debt is currently growing less rapidly compared to the early years of his presidency.
Generally, when Obama speaks about budgetary affairs, he takes credit for decreasing the shortfalls by two thirds. He stands correct while claiming that annual budget deficits have fallen from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009, during recession, to $439 billion in fiscal 2015. However, it is rarely seen that he discusses those annual deficits, the cost that the country would have to pay for the rise in debt and what it means for the USA and the future leaders.
In 2017, a newly elected president will have to deal with new challenges and predicaments as did Obama in 2009. The major challenges however and point of distinction for them would be the cost involved in settling these would have grown.
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