when Obama was inaugurated on 20-January-2009, Debt held by the public and intragovernemental debt) was 10.3 trillions dollars ( not sure if this includes the Iraq fiasco)
Roughly 4 trillions public debt and 6 Trillions dollars federal debt
The Debt Held by the Public is all federal debt held by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, Federal Reserve Banks, foreign governments, and other entities outside the United States Government less Federal Financing Bank securities.
According to https://treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current
as of 05-January-2017,
Debt held by the public : 14,428,038,035,922.01
Intragovernmental Holdings : 5,520,434,952,413.18
Total Debt: 19,948,472,988,335.19
Debt held by the public has increased by about 74% (up from 40% in 2008)
Money needed to be spent when the economy was in a free fall
to tackle the debt, government needs revenues, which were falling due to tax cuts, falling incomes, unemployment
Government needed money to cover unemployment benefits,medicaid ..etc)
balancing the budget was not a priority when Obama took over in 2009
why? because there would have been a depression IF nothing was done to stop the downturn
what has the Republican-controlled House of Representatives (since 2010) done to address the deficit ?
It's easy to blame Obama but Congress—and in particular, the House of Representatives—is invested with the “power of the purse,” the ability to tax and spend public money for the national government.
Countless Benghazi hearings, birther issue, government shutdown, happy marriage..etc
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction,[1] colloquially referred to as the Supercommittee, was a joint select committee of the United States Congress, created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 on August 2, 2011. This act was intended to prevent the sovereign default that could have resulted from the 2011 United States debt-ceiling crisis. The objective of the committee was to develop a deficit reduction plan over 10 years in addition to the $917 billion of cuts and initial debt limit increase of $900 billion in the Budget Control Act of 2011 that avoided a U.S. sovereign default. The committee recommendation was to have been subject to a simple vote by the full legislative bodies without amendment; this extraordinary provision was included to limit partisan gridlock.[2] The goal outlined in the Budget Control Act of 2011 was to cut at least $1.5 trillion over the coming 10 years, (avoiding much larger "sequestration" across-the-board cuts which would be equal to the debt ceiling increase of $1.2 trillion incurred by Congress through a failure to produce a deficit reduction bill), therefore bypassing Congressional debate and resulting in a passed bill by December 23, 2011.[3] On November 21, the committee concluded its work, issuing a statement that began with the following: "After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline."[4] The committee was formally terminated on January 31, 2012.[5]
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