The nation’s debt hit an astronomical $16 trillion, a staggering $135,578 for every family, and a crushing milestone that will echo across the campaign trail. (Jon Hyde)
CHARLOTTE, NC — The Democratic convention got off to an embarrassing start for President Obama yesterday when the nation’s debt hit an astronomical $16 trillion — a staggering $135,578 for every family, and a crushing milestone that will echo across the campaign trail.
Less than an hour before the first speaker took the stage in Charlotte, the Treasury Department announced that the national debt had hit the dismal mark.
That shatters the record for the biggest US debt in history and the largest accumulation of new debt by any president.
The grim news of the debt, which has increased more than $5.4 trillion on Obama’s watch, contrasted sharply with merrymaking on the convention floor.
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It was a sobering reminder of the huge task Obama faces to convince a nation burdened with budget deficits and joblessness that he deserves four more years.
Republicans were already hammering Obama for not tackling America’s debt problem and breaking his 2008 campaign promise to cut deficits in half by the end of his first term.
The Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., last week installed a giant national debt clock above the stage, reminding voters of the runaway spending and growing debt under Obama.
“President Obama has left Americans worse off than when he took office, with chronic unemployment and declining incomes,” GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said within minutes of the debt hitting the $16 trillion mark.
“But it’s not just this generation that’s paying the price. The next generation has been saddled with enormous debt because of President Obama’s policies.
“As president, Mitt Romney will take immediate action to cut spending and stop passing our bills on to our children.”
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the new debt figure “another sad reminder of President Obama’s broken promise to cut the deficit in half.”
“Instead of working in a bipartisan way to fulfill his promise, the president went on a stimulus-fueled spending binge that stuck every American man, woman and child with a $50,000 share of this $16 trillion national debt,” he said.
But Democratic leaders tried to put a happy face on America’s crippling IOU.
“It’s going up $4 billion a day. I don’t think it’s playing into Romney’s game,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told The Post.
“The president has got a plan. The only folks who don’t have a plan are Romney and [veep candidate Paul] Ryan,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told The Post. “The debt and deficit issue . . . need to be discussed.”
The mounting debt guarantees that Congress and whoever wins the White House in November will have to wrestle with increasing the government debt limit, which is currently capped at $16.39 trillion.
The last debate over raising the limit was a giant fight in Washington and the nation’s credit rating suffered.
The president was hit with other bad economic news yesterday when a new government report on shrinking factory and construction work added insult to economy injury.
Factory activity declined for the third consecutive month in August and construction spending dropped in July by the largest amount in a year, according to government data.
A new jobs report for August is due out Friday morning — and Democrats are crossing their fingers that the number of new jobs finally picks up after several anemic months of low growth.
Additional reporting by Josh Margolin