How much has President Obama added to the national debt?

Answer 1

The deficit has actually gone down under Obama, and as of the end of 2014, it is the lowest it's been since 2008, before he became President. At its worst, the deficit was about $1.5 trillion; as of July 2015, it's just under $500 billion.

You may be confusing the terms "debt" and "deficit".

- When the government spends more money than it makes, that difference is called a "deficit". So if the government makes $100 but spends $105, the deficit is $5.

- the "debt" is the total amount of money that the government owes for things. The deficit adds to it. It's a lot like how a credit card works (if your credit card had a limit somewhere in the trillions).

The debt has indeed gone up quite a bit under Obama, but the deficit has gone down quite a bit. When he took office in January 2009, the debt was about $10.6 trillion; as of July 2015, it's just over $18.3 trillion. Just looking at the numbers, with zero context, that seems very bad, but it's much more complicated than simple numbers, and I'm not going to get into those details here.

Additionally, the federal budget is made by Congress; the President can (and usually does) make suggestions, but the Constitution specifically put Congress in charge of formulating and passing a budget. So if you don't like the deficit or the debt, you should be complaining to your Congressional delegation, not Obama.

Answer 2

He hasn't raised it. There is a partisan belief that President Obama raised the deficit, and Mitt Romney used this assertion as ammunition against the president in the 2012 election cycle. But the fact is President Obama has gradually lowered the deficit. Up till about 2011, the deficit, which he inherited from President Bush, was indeed high and Mr. Obama was not able to do much to change this, as the recession continued.

But since then, there has been some very positive movement in deficit reduction: non-partisan fact-checking sites such as Politifact and Factcheck.org note that the deficit is in fact shrinking. In the summer of 2014, Politifact assessed the deficit and the president's claim that he was lowering it, and they concuded his claim was true. "Thanks to income tax revenues rising and spending on emergency assistance dropping, America's deficit has fallen by more than 50 percent from its highest point since World War II to a level $733 billion lower."

Answer 3

$4.3 TRILLION dollars. that would be, $43,000,000,000,000.00

I made a mistake,,,,that would be 4,300,000,000,000.00