the nation’s Total Public Debt Outstanding punched through the
$18 Trillion
level for the first time ever.
The Total Public Debt Outstanding during the Last Three Administrations
(Click on the graph to see a clearer, slightly larger version.)
$18 Trillion. Imagine 10 U.S. football fields (including end zones), placed side by side — that’s over 13 acres, folks! Now imagine every square inch of those 10 fields stacked as high as the Empire State Building with one dollar bills. That would be 18 Trillion dollars.
(When I say “national debt” here, I am referring to the Total Public Debt Outstanding, as defined and published by the U.S. Treasury Department.)
Here are a few interesting, if extremely worrying facts about our debt situation over last 22 years:
- In 8 years of the Clinton administration, the Debt rose by $1.54 Trillion.
- In 8 years of the Bush administration, the Debt rose by $4.9 Trillion.
- In just under 6 years of the Obama administration, the Debt has risen by $7.38 Trillion.
- If the Debt trend of the last 6 years continues until the end of the Obama administration, it will have risen by a total of $9.84 Trillion. That would be a whopping 93% increase — almost doubling the debt the administration inherited.
Now, stop and ask yourself: Where are we getting the cold hard cash to pay for all this excess spending? The Fed? China?
What happens when the Fed stops printing money? or when China refuses to loan us any more? Did you know that China has been quietly dumping its U.S. debt bonds for years now? That really doesn’t sound like a good thing to me.
What happens when the bill comes due??
NEVER vote for another politician who does not strongly support, and does not present in precise detail, a workable plan to lower our debt. Demand better!
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Grover's Take on Things 
Pardon me for this question, but I’m not an economist. I may therefore be missing something fundamental intended by your graphics. (My training and licensure is in physics, radiation and acoustics.)
Why are your graphs so markedly different from the ones I could find displaying national debt as a percentage of GDP? Are you oversimplifying by just charting the concluding debt total, as opposed to tracking the movements of both factors, debt vs. production? Unless you co-track the GDP fluctuations concurrently, the higher number isn’t an accurate reflection of anything except “this number is higher”. Here’s an example:
Click to access 44172-Baseline2.pdf
By: Invisible Mikey on 2 December 2014
at 8:53 pm
Thanks for your inquiry, I.M. I get my accumulated U.S. Debt figures directly from the U.S. Treasury Department daily. I get my GDP figures directly from the U.S. Department of Commerce quarterly, which is how often they are calculated and updated. I take those numbers and plot them in my graph.
There are other ways to analyze and report the data (e.g., playing games with how much one reports of Debt Held by the Public vs. Intragovernmental Holdings, in an attempt to show the Debt as lower than it actually is). I, however, have chosen to be consistent and report the figure called the Total Public Debt Outstanding, as defined and published by the Treasury Department.
This is what my graph shows: As of last Friday, the Total Public Debt Outstanding was $18,005,549,328,561.45 and as of last reporting (for 3rd Quarter 2014) of GDP was $17,555.2 Billion.
You do the math.
By: Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr. on 2 December 2014
at 9:14 pm