The United States national debt has now hit the $18 trillion mark. That is the highest the national debt has been and many are questioning how much money the government is spending under President Obama.

When the President took office in 2009 the national debt was $10.6 trillion but has increased by 70% during his 6 years in office. The National Debt was $0, 178 years, that was 1876 and since then until 2009 the debt went to $10.6 trillion. It took 178 years to hit that figure but only  6 years to go up another $8 trillion.

The debt is the sum of two numbers. The first is public debt which is at $12.92 trillion. This is treasure bills, notes and bonds held by individuals and foreign governments. The second is the ‘intra-government’ of $5.08 trillion. These are special securities held by the United States, basically its money the government borrowed from Social Security and Medicare that is wrote an IOU for.

There is a little good news in all of this; the money the government spends annually in excess of revenue has dropped under President Obama from $1.4 trillion to $483 billion.

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