The US Senate Budget Committee says that the federal debt could hit $16.2 trillion after another term under President Barack Obama, but others aren’t even that optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office says a disaster could be much more imminent.
According to some Republican lawmakers on the Senate Budget Committee, four more years under the current commander-in-chief could cause the country’s debt to expand by $16.2 trillion by 2015, a full $6.2 trillion more than what the country owed when George W Bush left office in early ’09. Unless President Obama makes some drastic changes to his current budget plans, the GOP members of the committee contest that the country could be in some serious trouble, even after another Obama victory."Federal debt will increase to $25.4 trillion by the end of 2022, an increase of $10.6 trillion (72 percent) under the president’s budget policies," the committee notes. As early as 2015, they say they number could come to $20.3 trillion.If you ask members of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, though, things could be very bad, very soon."This CBO report underscores why on August 1, I and other House GOP leaders urged the Senate to follow the House in passing legislation that would steer our nation clear of the fiscal cliff," House Speaker John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) writes in a statement this week. The CBO goes on to claim that if Congress can’t keep $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts from going through in January, not only would another immediate recession be likely but Americans could expect to see the unemployment rate surge once more too.The nonpartisan group says that, at this rate, the US debt will exceed $1 trillion in 2013 for a fifth straight year, unless Congress finds a drastic way to cut budget spending.