US National Debt Problem

There is a widespread concern about rising levels of debt. Debt can become disastrous for those who live alone or those families who are already having problems with supporting their family. The people who might be struck by debt, they might have trouble recovering. Debt can cause Americans to lose their homes and stability they need to feed, and shelter their families. Although debt comes upon us Americans quickly, people can see debt as terrible thing to be stuck with. It has many disadvantages that can devastate to people.

Some has likened the United States current debt problems as the “Titanic.” A foreboding doom that will affect every citizen in America. One may ask about where and who this problem started with, one will probably obtain different answers. Currently, the United States credit is maxed out and credit rating could be affected even if payments continues to be made. It has also been said by the president that even Social Security and Medicare recipients may not obtain their money if the two August deadline is not met to raise the debt ceiling. Tough choices

Since the nation’s very beginning, it has carried a debt from the American Revolution. Only once in the entire U.S. history has been the debt zero, during President Andrew Jackson’s administration in the 1830’s. President Jackson set a budget like the other future and past presidents, but actually stayed within its parameters. However, the debt kept growing after his presidency and reached $18 trillion dollars today. The world has changed a lot since the 1830’s, the methods used during that period can no longer be the solution in 2015 because there are just too many factors that must be considered. The size and the population of the country have changed dramatically, foreign relationships are far more complicated and broader, and people’s expectations of the government are different.

Currently, the United States owes approximately $19 trillion in National Debt. It is owed to Mutual funds, pension funds, foreign governments, foreign investors, American investors and many others. From the year 1959 to 2015, the United States debt has gone up by around 7554% from the debt in 1959 starting at $285 billion. The debt itself has increased by around 9 trillion since Barack Obama has taken the Presidential office in 2009. Everything has been done to increase national debt, but nothing has been made to reduce the national debt.

In 2009 the debt was amounted to about $12 trillion , or 83.4 percent of the country’s GDP (“Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2011” table 7.1). Since 2003, the debt has been increasing by more than $500 billion annually. The increase in 2009 was $1.9 trillion. According to the Congressional Budgeting Office, this debt will keep increasing at least for the next decade (“The Budget and Economic Outlook : Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020” 21).

In the grandiose words of George Washington, we should “cherish public credit… [avoid] accumulation of debt”. Washington loathed debts, and did anything that he could to avoid debts. As you can observe in the current day, our debt can risen a huge amount over the last few centuries. On December 22nd, at 10:50 A.M, the United States was in debt by $19,944,078,298,000 and rising every second. For the US to be out of debt, each of the 325,166,983 citizens would need to pay $61,338 as of 10:52 A.M (12/22/16). This is insanity. Just 16 years ago, we only had $5.629 trillion in

Fixing the national debt is a coservercal issue within our government. Since the two parties have opposing views on how to fix it, it creates gridlock on the process of creating a plan to reduce it. (Perdue, 2015) Our federal government debt has extensively tripled since the year 2000 (see appendix A) (Historical Debt Outstanding Annual 2000-2015,2015), today our debt is a tad bit over nineteen billion. (U.S.NationalDebtClock.org , 2016) We have arrived at his point through the imbalance between revenues and spending, fueled by ever-high interest rates. Which will approximately result with us reaching ninety percent of GDP. (Greife, 2010) The government has no revenue. Therefore, the money it receives comes from the people and the

Neither Republicans nor Democrats appear to have any sense of urgency in rectifying this problem. Fortunately the U.S. Government has a good reputation of paying its debts and thus has a good credit rating which allows it to continue borrowing, although that good standing was put to the test recently in 2011 when Standard& Poor’s reduced the U.S. rating from AAA to AA+.

One trillion dollars is an astounding amount of money. What if I told you that the United States of America is in debt not just one trillion dollars, but nineteen trillion dollars in debt, as of 2016. As time goes on, the United States only continues to rack up more and more debt. It is estimated that in just 4 years, our national debt will increase by about 2 trillion dollars. The truth is, our country has been battling debt ever since it was founded. Today, with the debt increasing so fast, every politician is striving to balance the budget, so the United States can continue to be the best country it can be. If the United States cannot dig itself out of this ever deepening hole, national security will become an issue, influential power will be stripped away, and ultimately quality of life in this nation will become extremely undesirable. I believe the United States national debt is a huge threat to our country and something must be changed in order to battle this crisis.

The government has to consider raising the debt ceiling or there will be severe consequences for the American people. Because of the excessive amount of national debt, people may not continue receiving their funding from the government. “Without raising the limit, the federal government may have to stop or delay payments such as Social Security checks, Medicare benefits and military salaries” (Murray, S. 2011). Not only will the debt crisis affect the American people, but it will impact the global economy as well.

The US national debt has become an important topic in recent years and needs to be looked at moving into the future. This is the amount owed by the federal government of the United States. This debt is made up of debts held by the public and also debts held by government accounts. The extreme amount of our national debt should be seen as a problem and will need to be fixed. The amount owed is getting to the point where it needs to be taken care of and lowered to a point that is controllable. There are consequences if the national

The U.S. national debt is very large at more than three-quarters the size of the economy—and growing federal spending, especially on entitlements, is quickly driving the debt to damaging levels. Federal spending was about 23 percent of the GDP in 2012—far above the historical average of 20.2 percent. It is projected to surge to nearly 36 percent in less than one generation. The government debt must be limited in some way or else our economy will face devastating consequences. The government debt has had its highs and lows throughout history in comparison to the GDP, and to reduce it, we must minimize spending on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.

The United States of America has carried some amount of federal debt every year since the country was founded. From this empirical evidence, it can be said that debt itself is not damaging to an economy. After all, the country has had periods of rapid growth and economic booms while carrying different amounts of debt. It is also plain to see that a very large amount a debt, an amount that could not ever be eliminated without unreasonably inflating the dollar, could have devastating effects. The US dollar is a fiat currency, which holds value only when holders of the currency have confidence in the issuing institution, in this case the US government. In the event the government could not repay its debts, the value of the currency would drop as people lose confidence. The effects on the US economy, households, businesses, trading partners and foreign governments would be disastrous and widespread.

I believe the debt facing America is one of America's largest problems to this day. America is over 18 trillion dollars in debt. Politicians always speak of reducing the debt, however it has not been done. The debt of America has not even been paused for an extremely long time. According to, taxpolicycenter.org only 55% of Americas spending is mandatory. This means that America may be able to reduce spending by 45%. The main priorities America spends it’s money on is social security, unemployment, food and agriculture, transportation, medical and health care, and veterans benefit. These things are very important, but it makes one wonder, where is the other 45% going? Citizens of America has always said that America, indeed the best country

For years, the issue of the Government's national debt (and its payment) has been a major political issue. As of July 1st, 2004 the Federal Debt has reached an all time high of 7.252 trillion dollars (that means that each person in the United States is be over 24,000 dollars in debt). According to economists, the debt will increase by 1.6 billion dollars per day!