Sunday, November 27, 2016

Where the National Debt Will Be When Obama Leaves Office and What Will Happen to It Under Trump

Since the U.S. federal government’s fiscal year cycled over to FY2017 on October 1, 2016, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding has been growing at a faster rate. If that faster growth rate holds at the average pace it has had through November 23, 2016, just before Thanksgiving, the total public debt outstanding will grow to exceed $20 trillion sometime around December 15, 2016.


Extending that projection out further, by the time that President Obama reaches the end of his tenure in office on January 20, 2017, the U.S. total public debt outstanding would be slightly under $20.16 trillion, which would mean that President Obama’s fiscal policies would be responsible for having increased the size of the national debt by $9.5 trillion, nearly doubling its size since he was first sworn into office on January 20, 2009. Over the 8 years of his presidency, that represents the national debt of the U.S. growing by an average rate of nearly $1.2 trillion per year.
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget analysis, the various fiscal policy proposals that President-elect Donald Trump advanced during the 2016 election campaign would result in the U.S. national debt increasing by another $5.3 billion over the next 10 years, which would represent an average growth rate of $0.53 trillion per year.
The above originally appeared at mygovcost.org
RW note: Under Trump, I expect the debt to climb higher than the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projections.

1 comment:

  1. One of Obama's most grating "lawyer" lines of Grade A BS: "raising the debt ceiling doesn't add one penny to the national debt." Technically true, but...

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