Debt By Numbers

So the national debt has crossed the $17 trillion mark – and is likely to continue climbing seeing as “Republicans” in Congress gave the administration of Barack Obama a blank check to borrow as much money as it wants between now and next February.

While you contemplate that … let’s take a look at the last six years of debt expansion courtesy of official figures from the U.S. Treasury Department …

TODAY: $17,075,590,107,963.57
09/30/2012: $16,066,241,407,385.89
09/30/2011: $14,790,340,328,557.15
09/30/2010: $13,561,623,030,891.79
09/30/2009: $ 11,909,829,003,511.75
09/30/2008: $10,024,724,896,912.49

Yikes … that’s 70 percent increase over the last six years. With no end in sight.

“We are stealing about $100,000,000 from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day,” writes Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse Blog. ” This goes on 24 hours a day, month after month, year after year without any interruption.”

Snyder goes on to note that “the U.S. national debt is now 37 times larger than it was 40 years ago, and we are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the eight years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.”

Snyder doesn’t just blame Obama, though.

“During the last two elections the American people have given the Republicans a solid majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the government cannot spent a single penny without their approval,” he notes.

That’s true … of course as we’ve noted previously the GOP is a “House Divided.” And you know what they say about those.

Anyway, props to Snyder for laying out the bare bones black-and-white (or rather green-and-white) reality of America’s soaring debt – and the culpability of both parties when it comes to its accelarating accumulation.