Today, the national debt is $16,015,769,788,215.80 (as of 8/31/12 — US Department of the Treasury, TreasuryDirect.gov, accessed 9/4/12). It was $10,626,877,048,913.08 when Obama became president. That is an increase of more than a five and one-half trillion dollars (50 percent) during in the forty-two months of the Obama presidency.

In honor of this momentous occasion, the Republican National Committee in conjunction with Romney for President released a new video titled,  “$16 Trillion.”

$16 trillion is more than the value of all the goods and services produced in the United States last year. (“Gross Domestic Product,” Bureau of Economic Analysis, BEA.gov, accessed 9/4/12.)  $16 trillion is also 25 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.

It gets worse. According to Duquesne University Economics Professor Antony Davies, the debt and unfunded obligations of the federal government total $64.09 trillion. An amount greater than the “economic output of the entire planet.” That’s right, the entire planet.

If current trends continue, the U.S. will become operationally bankrupt in 2037 and will be actually bankrupt in 2047.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took President Obama to task for the 50 percent increase in the national debt during his presidency:

“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. President Obama’s budget got zero votes in Congress and we can only expect more of the same inaction in a second term.”

On July 3, 2008, Presidential candidate Obama said that adding $4 trillion in debt was “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.” Obama was referring to the $3.764 trillion that had been added to the national debt during the seven and one-half years Bush had been president. Obama of course got his facts wrong when he falsely claimed President Bush increased the national debt by $4 trillion “by his lonesome.” When Speaker Pelosi took over Congress on January 3, 2007, the national debt was $8.7 trillion. So the Democrats must get some of the credit for one of the four trillion dollars candidate Obama tried to blame on Bush.

Despite his promises to cut the deficit in half by the end of his “first” term, Obama has racked up the largest deficits in U.S. history:

• FY2009: The federal budget deficit was $1.413 trillion, the highest in U.S. history. (“Monthly Budget Review: November 2011,” Congressional Budget Office, 11/7/11)
• FY2011: The federal budget deficit was $1.299 trillion, the second highest in U.S. history. (“Monthly Budget Review: November 2011,” Congressional Budget Office, 11/7/11)
• FY2010: The federal budget deficit was $1.294 trillion, the third highest in U.S. history. (“Monthly Budget Review: November 2011,” Congressional Budget Office, 11/7/11)
• The Congressional Budget Office projects that the deficit for fiscal year 2012 (which ends on September 30), will total $1.1 trillion, Obama’s fourth straight trillion dollar deficit. (“An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022,” Congressional Budget Office, 8/22/12)

You shouldn’t be shocked by Obama’s failure to reduce the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office. He did warn us there would be “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.”

It could have been even worse. According to the Washington Post’s fact checker, every year President Obama has wanted to spend more money than Congress would allow.