National Debt

President Obama has released revised budget projections, and they show another record deficit for the federal budget.  The budget deficit for the 2009 fiscal year was a record of $1.4 trillion, but the projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 is projected to set a new record at almost $1.6 trillion.  In 2011, the Administration expects the deficit to decline to “just” $1.3 trillion.

Looking down the road past 2011, the Obama Administration projects that the deficit will Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama’s first year is in the books, so it seems like an appropriate time to see how he is handling the National Debt.  When President Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the National Debt stood at just under $10.627 trillion.  On his one-year anniversary of January 20, 2010, the National Debt totaled just over $12.327 trillion.

That means the National Debt has increased by a whopping $1.7 trillion during his first year in office.  That is the largest single year increase of any President in the history of the United States.

It will be interesting to see what the second year holds.

The U.S. Treasury Department reported yesterday that the federal budget deficit hit an all-time high for the month of December 2009.  The deficit for December totalled $91.85 billion, the largest December deficit ever recorded.  Additionally, the budget deficit for the first three months of the current budget year (which began on October 1, 2009) was larger than last year’s record deficit. Read the rest of this entry »

Health Care Reform is a worthy goal, and most Americans agree that some type of health care reform is needed.   But can our nation afford President Obama’s version of health care reform?  What will it do to our budget deficit and national debt?

Official projections are that it will reduce the budget deficit and the national debt because of cost savings and efficiencies.  In this article, I want to put forth an opposing point of view.  I believe that this health care reform will ultimately prove to cause dramatic increases in the budget deficit and the national debt.  There are two reasons I believe this. Read the rest of this entry »

There seems to be a lot of debate around the water cooler and the dinner table as to which President is most responsible for the increase in the National Debt.  In this article, I’d like to take a look at the growth in the National Debt by President using an unbiased approach.  This analysis uses National Debt figures from the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget.

To be sure, there is plenty of blame to go around for the uncontrolled growth in the National Debt.  For this analysis Read the rest of this entry »

Today our U.S. Government Debt is growing faster than at any time in our nation’s history.  But why is our government debt growing so fast?

The answer lies in how our federal budgeting and spending process works.  Each year, Congress and the President approve a budget that consists of government tax receipts and government expenditures.  If the tax receipts exceed the expenditures (this never happens anymore), then we have a budget surplus.  If the expenditures exceed the receipts Read the rest of this entry »