As national debt passes $16 trillion, GOP blasts Obama's policies

Chairman of the Republican National Committee Reince Priebus announces the display of the debt ticker during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Monday, Aug. 27, 2012.

/ AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

(CBS News) Hours before Democrats were set to officially kick off the Democratic National Convention, the Treasury Department on Tuesday announced that the national debt has surpassed $16 trillion for the first time in American history - giving Republicans fodder for criticism as Democrats celebrate their party and the president.

In a statement following the announcement, House Speaker John Boehner targeted President Obama's economic record, casting the news as "another sad reminder of President Obama's broken promise to cut the deficit in half."

"This debt is a drain on our economy and a crushing burden on our kids and grandkids, and it's yet another indication that the president's policies have made things worse," he argued.

"The past four years Barack Obama hasn't offered any serious solutions to get our spending under control and instead he has run 4 straight years of trillion dollar deficits," said Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee. "President Obama's budget got zero votes in Congress and we can only expect more of the same inaction in a second term."

Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., meanwhile, cited the number as "a new unfortunate threshold which should be a call to action for Washington to finally address the potentially debilitating challenges posed by our unsustainable deficits and debt."

"Doing so is going to require pro-growth tax reform combined with a long-term plan to restore solvency to entitlement programs, especially Medicare and Social Security," he urged. "A fiscal reform plan including these reforms would alleviate much of the uncertainty which has been holding back the private sector investment necessary to create jobs, grow the economy, and allow us to focus on being a great nation."

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, warned that the U.S. is on a "dramatically unsustainable path," and accused the president of being "strangely unconcerned."

"This is a grim landmark for the United States. The gross debt of our federal government will, for the first time, surpass $16 trillion," said Sessions. "That's more government debt per person than Portugal, Italy, Spain, or Greece. Yet the President seems strangely unconcerned."

The national debt was at $10.6 trillion when President Obama took office, reports CBS News' Mark Knoller.

On Monday, Mr. Obama said he was not ready to give himself a grade on fixing the economy, telling a reporter that he would rather give himself a rating of "incomplete."

"I would say incomplete," he told CBS affiliate KKTV in Colorado Springs. "But what I would say is the steps that we've taken in saving the auto industry, in making sure that college is more affordable and investing in clean energy and science and technology and research, those are all the things that we're going to need to grow over the long term."

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan ridiculed that notion on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday, asking, "Four years into a presidency and an incomplete?"

"[T]he president is asking people just to be patient with him," he said, attacking Mr. Obama for "picking winners and losers in the economy" and borrowing and spending money.

Continued Ryan: "I think the incomplete speaks for itself, and that is why I think we are going to win this and get this country on the right track because we're offering solutions."

[TimeToEvolve]

The debt was never a problem when the Bush Crime Family and the GOP was running it through the roof. Does that make anyone else suspicious about why it is suddenly a big deal? Maybe that was their plan all along.

[RJSchundlr]

Back when Bush was in office the Debt was half of what it is today, Obama created more that all the other presidents and has nothing to show for it, and there were issues with the debt being high under Bush and Clinton, the debt was just less then, most likely you did not notice because Bush was not your man

[infantryman1968]

As national debt passes $16 trillion, GOP blasts Obama's policies


LOL!


If you are an Obama follower, no worries unless he loses.

[stupa5]

Obama 2012
deport Romney to the Caymans

[Jaylah54200]

Guess Boehner (conveniently) forgot that the President can't spend any money not authorized by Congress.

[A_Canadian_Opinion]

Yeah, remember, all the kings horses and all the kings men took a lot of (borrowed) money to try to put Humpty back together again. Bush left a mess that made Hurricane Katrina and the Japan Sunami look like minor disasters! It takes a lot of money to fix messes. Can't believe Americans would line up for another round of GOP policy.

[robert1129]

These Republicans have absolutely no respect for the inteligence of the American people. Our system of government is simple when it comes to money matters. All money bills start in the House (dominated by GOP) and then go to the Senate - both the authorization and later the appropriation bills. When approved by Congress, they go to the President for his signature. If the GOP is serious about this issue, just do not give Obama all of the money he asks for.

[bluejacket2-2009]

To the OP... so what, blame the debt on Dick Chaney and GW Bush who started two wars (Iraq and Afganistan) that we couldn't afford.. Oh, those two dopy guys also caused the USA housing collapse too... As Bill Clinton said, pay as you go!

[marychgo]

The current top U.S. tax bracket (35% now, 39.6% under Clinton) BEGINS at an Adjusted Gross Income of roughly $384,000. Since the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the tiny number of U.S. households subject to that tax rate -- one or two percent of the population -- has SAVED hundreds of thousands (and, in many cases, millions) of dollars in taxes. I will believe that the Republicans actually CARE about the deficit on the day -- and not a moment BEFORE the day -- that they concede that our top tax rate should be higher than 35%!

[californiadreaming1]

Sorry, but you have no idea of what you are talking about. The Bush tax cuts lowered tax brackets all the way down the line. People earning 100K, 50K, even 25K benefited. The cuts also reduced the "marriage penalty". As to the high income earners - many of them (at least those below $2M a year) get nailed by the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) and therefore the cuts barely lower their income - if at all! Please stop talking about things you know nothing about!

[marychgo]

Sorry, californiadreaming, but the AMT brings top earners' marginal rate UP to 35%, NOT UP to 39.6%, the rate they paid during most of the Clinton administration!

[jonnyooh]

It should be considered that the GOP owns the Fox News moron voter base. Almost all the voters who will be voting Republican reside on the lower half of the IQ scale. This includes the religious right, the KKK, the zit brain pro-life protesters outside abortion clinics, and various other perturbed masturbators that form the right wing nut job population of this country. The Republicans have them believing their lies. Unfortunately for America, about half of the independents fall in the bottom half of the IQ scale and half in the upper section. These are the people who decide who will be president. In the Bush/Gore campaign, it was almost even. Now we are seeing the same thing in the polls. If morons were not permitted to vote, the Republican party would crash and burn. But they vote Republican and keep the 1% in the winner's circle, so no one will ever take their voter rights away. The Repubs own them body and soul.

[chuckf75]

I am really not sure about raw intelligence but most of the liberal people I know work for me. They are often looking for something for nothing and the Dems serve it right up across their lives. If unintelligent people vote Rep, why the stink about making these folks who don't have the everyday identification to function in our society to show they are a citizen to vote? This would cause more "unintelligent" Reps NOT to vote, furthering your agenda. Could it be that these folks are really Libs and this is why Dems are up in arms about this? That makes the most sense, right?

[jonnyooh]

No chuck, working class Republicans, AKA Foxbot morons who inhabit Murdoch's land of the walking dead, where they have been treated to a Murdoch style frontal lobotomy, number in the millions. When LBJ put his signature on the civil rights act of 1964, he said that we had probably lost the Southern vote for a generation, [because Southerners are bigots and resented the heck out of blacks getting rights]. He was wrong, unfortunately. So far it's been two and a half generations. He didn't foresee that the Republican Scumbag Mafia would take advantage of what should have been a temporary shift from the Democratic party until they saw the error in their ways, and turned them into Republican voting machines. How? Via Rupert Murdoch's brainwashing factory. Rupert took these poor souls to a land of no return. He brainwashed them to believe the Republicans were the good guys and the Party was their salvation. The ultimate goal of brainwashing is to make facts sound like lies and to make the truth sound like BS. Once that is accomplished, there is no return to the days when they were jolly and free-spirited morons. They have become victims of the Invasion of the Mind Snatchers! Why can't they return? Because they can't learn. Why? Because suppose they happen to pick up a book by one of the great ones and decide to begin an education. They will throw the book down before they finish the first paragraph, because it comes across as BS. Any time they read a fact in an article or hear one on TV, it comes across as a lie. They come to the CBS comment board and read something by one of the regular commenters, and if it disagrees with the truth according to Murdoch, they believe they are reading something written by an ignorant fool. You are brainwashed. No more learning for you. Murdoch's underlings will tell you what you need to know. They will do your thinking for you. Rush Limbaugh it the moron's Socrates. The down and out folks you mention who have no photo ID don't compare in numbers to the Republican voting moron. Republicans serve the super rich. The super rich don't have enough votes among themselves to swing an election. But with America's red state moron population they do. They did it with George W. Without the brainwashed red state moron, the Republican Party would crash and burn. Obama got the votes of America's college students. I don't know what kind of liberal works for you, but judging by the intelligence of your comment, I would guess that you got the bottom of the liberal barrel. From what your comment tells me about you, I wouldn't work for you and none of the people I know would. I don't consider myself a liberal. I am closer to the extreme left where you find the revolutionary. In fact, I have a cute little revolutionary rallying cry. Want to hear it? Here goes - read it or close your eyes: I am waiting for the day when America gets an Arab Spring. My hope is that it will make the Chinese Cultural Revolution look like a Church of Christ ice cream social. Are you brainwashed, chuck? Does my comment sound like BS to you?

[josephp5]

Who cares about the debt? It doesn't have anything to do with our economic problems. It's unemployment that we need to do something about. We should borrow even more in order to pay for another stimulus. Perhaps a trillion dollars may be necessary. Then, when the economy improves and people are working again, we can start worrying about the debt. Cutting spending is exactly the wrong thing to do when the economy is in the tank.