Gov’t Has Borrowed an Additional $29,660 Per Household Since Obama Signed Stimulus

According to reports, the federal government has borrowed an additional $29,660 per household since President Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus, bringing the total national debt to $125,475.18 per household. Ouch.

CNS News reports:

At the close of business on Feb. 17, 2009, the day Obama signed the $787-billion law, the national debt stood at $10.79 trillion ($10,789,783,760,341.41), according the Bureau of the Public Debt. At the close of business on Feb. 16, 2011, the national debt stood at $14.13 trillion ($14,129,889,690,377.50)—an increase of $3.34 trillion (3,340,105,930,036.09)

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are a total of 112,611,029 households in the United States, which average about 2.6 people per household. That means that the new debt accumulated in the two years since Feb. 17, 2009, when President Obama signed his economic stimulus law, equals about $29,660.55 per household.

The current total national debt of $14.13 trillion can be divided into equal portions of $125,475.18 for each of the 112,611,029 households in the country.

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Social Security, Defense Top List of Debt Panel's Targets

The bipartisan fiscal commission has been working on a plan to reduce the national debt, and Social Security and Pentagon expenses are at the top of their list of major federal expenses. The commission has yet to propose tactics to reduce these expenses, but they are already being confronted with major opposition. Check out the following story on this new development—courtesy of USA Today.

Social Security and the Pentagon are among the early targets of the bipartisan fiscal commission established by President Obama to address the USA's spiraling national debt.

The panel, which held its second public meeting today, barely mentioned the biggest reason for the $13 trillion debt and annual $1.5 trillion budget deficits: health care. The president recently signed an overhaul that's projected to save $143 billion over 10 years, but that won't be nearly enough to reverse the tide of red ink.

What's emerging on the 18-member panel is a split between a majority favoring tough action to tame the debt and a minority, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's appointees, who appear more concerned about today's economy and jobs picture.

"Cutting now would be a mistake," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. -- despite the fact that cutting spending and/or increasing taxes is the presumed goal of the panel. Her colleague, Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., raised one of Congress' sacred cows -- treating wounded war veterans -- as but one reason to avoid too much deficit reduction.

On the other side were panel chairmen Erskine Bowles, a North Carolina Democrat, and Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican; several powerful Democrats who long have favored deficit reduction; and most of the commission's Republicans.

Continue reading at USA Today.com…

Obama Election-Year Jobs Agenda Stalls in Congress

President Obama’s election year promise to create jobs in the country is going no where in Congress because of a lack of money to pay for such a program. According to Andrew Taylor, of the Associated Press, both Republicans and the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee objected to using leftover funds from the TARP program to pay for a new jobs bill.

Such a move, they insisted, would add tens of billions of dollars to the $12.8 trillion national debt.

An $80 billion-plus Senate plan promised an infusion of cash to build roads and schools, help local governments keep teachers on the payroll, and provide rebates for homeowners who make energy-saving investments. Two months after the plan was introduced, most of those main elements remain on the Senate's shelf.

Obama's proposed $250 bonus payment to Social Security recipients is dead for the year, having lost a Senate vote last month.

What's going ahead instead are small-bore initiatives. That includes modest help for small business or simple extensions of parts from last year's economic stimulus measure. None is expected to make an appreciable dent in an unemployment rate, stubbornly stuck at 9.7 percent, which is more that double what it was three years ago.

Continue reading at MyWay.com…

National Debt to be Higher than White House Forecast

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obama’s proposed budget would add over $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next ten yeas. They made the announcement on Friday, and claim that the President’s tax cuts for the middle class are the main reason for the shortfall.

The 10-year outlook released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama's budget request would produce deficits that would add about $8.5 trillion to the national debt by 2020.

The CBO and the White House are in relative agreement about the short-term budget picture, with both predicting a deficit of about $1.5 trillion this year -- a post-World War II record at 10.3 percent of the overall economy -- and $1.3 trillion in 2011. But the CBO is considerably less optimistic about future years, predicting that deficits would never fall below 4 percent of the economy under Obama's policies and would begin to grow rapidly after 2015.

Deficits of that magnitude would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt soaring to 90 percent of the economy by 2020, the CBO said. Interest payments on the debt would also skyrocket by $800 billion over the same period.

Continue Reading at WashingtonPost.com…

Congress Settles for $300B Increase in Debt Ceiling Until Next Year

From the Examiner.com:

House Democrats settle for a $300 Billion increase in the national debt ceiling in order to avoid limits on spending.

Moderate Democrats had intended to attach amendments to the initial $1.8 Trillion increase that would have required congress to pay for any new legislation by either cutting spending in other areas, or raising taxes. In order to avoid what seemed like a responsible reaction to out of control spending Democratic leaders changed the debt hike to $300B for the next two months, and intend to debate for the rest of the increase next year when congress returns to session.

In an uncharacteristic move Democratic leaders have also said they would not attach the debt hike to the defense spending bill, as it was initially thought. It is doubtful that this is a trend, but for a change congress seems to be letting a bill stand or die on its own merits.