A sickening economic milestone

Last week, without fanfare, the US public debt exceeded $16 trillion.  As Zero Hedge points out:

At this rate of growth, total US debt will surpass:

• $17 trillion on June 10, 2013;
• $18 trillion on March 23, 2014;
• $19 trillion on January 3, 2015; and
• $20 trillion on October 16, 2015

And on, and on, and on...

There's more at the link.

It's worth remembering that when President Obama took office on January 20th, 2009, US public debt stood at $10.6 trillion.  It's now 51% greater than that.  In other words, in less than four years in office, President Obama has presided over an increase in US public debt approximately equal to the entire public debt incurred under all of his predecessors up to and including President Clinton - a period spanning 211 years.

However, we shouldn't hold President Obama solely or even primarily responsible for this economic catastrophe.  As Gary North observes in his review of the documentary movie 2016: Obama’s America;

I need to make three observations. First, the deficit is vastly worse than the movie portrays. The movie sticks with the non-issue: the on-budget debt of $15 trillion, which is chump change, while never mentioning the central problem: the $222 trillion present value of the unfunded liabilities of the off-budget deficit, meaning the deficits of politically sacrosanct Social Security and Medicare. This is the heart of the federal government’s highly entertaining Punch and Judy show over the deficit, with Paul Ryan as Punch and Obama cross-dressing as Judy.

Second, Walker has spent years warning the public about the unsustainable increase of the on-budget federal debt. He was eloquent on camera. But, central to that presentation, is the fact that he blamed George W. Bush as much as he blamed Obama. He says on-camera that the turning point on the deficit began with Bush’s presidency. He showed that we are headed for a fiscal disaster, and it may overtake us during the presidency of whoever is elected in 2016.

In terms of the on-budget deficit, Obama’s Administration is an extension of Bush’s. Miss this, and you miss the whitewash. This documentary is an implicit whitewash. It relies on an assumption, namely, that we are not dealing in 2012 with a single political administration, which began in January 2001. Sadly, we are.

. . .

Third, neither Walker nor D’Souza mentions on-screen what should be the obvious Constitutional fact, namely, that it is the Congress that legally initiates all spending bills, and it is the House of Representatives that holds the hammer constitutionally. There was not one word in the movie about the Congress of the United States as being constitutionally in authority over the budget of the United States government. How in the world could anyone make a documentary that focuses at the very end on the central problem that the country faces, and then try to pin the tail on Obama as the donkey?

We are living in a bipartisan, congressionally mandated, slow-motion train wreck. The Congress of the United States could stop Obama today as easily as it could have stopped Bush. Congress is not interested in stopping the deficit; it is interested in avoiding all responsibility for the annual $1.2 trillion budget disaster that is the federal budgetary process.

Again, more at the link.  Bold print is Mr. North's emphasis.

All of our politicians are complicit in having gotten us into this mess, and we're all complicit in it as well for allowing them to do so.  The inevitable result of our profligacy is now staring us in the face with mathematical inevitability.  As I've said before, the current presidential election campaigns are largely irrelevant - because whoever is elected is going to find his hands tied by economic reality.  It's not going to be pretty.

Peter