Obama's Parting Gift: $20 Trillion National Debt
President Barack Obama regards Obamacare as his signature domestic achievement, but he'll leave something else behind as well: a national debt that has nearly doubled just as he leaves the White House.
The Washington Times reports the total debt stood at $10.6 when the president came into office and will hit $20 trillion as his term ends in 2017.
And that number is going to go higher since the caps on spending, known as "sequestration," have been abandoned.
"Congress and the president have just agreed to undo one of the only successful fiscal restraint mechanisms in a generation," The Times quoted Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union. "The progress on reducing spending and the deficit has just become much more problematic."
Former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and administration officials say the spending increases in their two-year budget agreement will be funded by cuts elsewhere.
But according to the Times, some budget analysts are challenging that claim.
"The Boehner-Obama spending agreement would allow for unlimited borrowing by the Treasury until March 2017," Paul Winfree, director of economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, charged.
"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," he said.
