In 6 Months Since Budget Deal: Debt Up More Than $1 Trillion
(CNSNews.com) - In the six months that have passed since then-retiring House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cut a budget deal with President Barack Obama that suspended the legal limit on the federal debt until March 15, 2017, the federal debt has increased by more than $1 trillion.
The Senate passed “The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015” with a vote held in the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 30. Obama signed it on Monday, Nov. 2.
At the close business on Oct. 30, 2015, the total federal debt was $18,152,981,685,747.52. By the close of business on April 28, 2016—the latest date for which the Treasury has published the number [1]--the total federal debt was $19,186,207,744,589.55.
That is an increase of $1,033,226,058,842.03.
On Monday, Nov. 2--the day Obama signed the Bipartisan Budget Act and thus suspended the debt limit--the debt took a big leap. It closed that day at $18,492,091,120,833.99—up $339,109,435,086.47 from its $18,152,981,685,747.52 closing on Friday, Oct. 30.
Prior to that, the part of the federal debt subject to the then-legal limit of $18,113,000,080,959.35 had been frozen just below that limit for more than seven months (from March 13, 2015 through Oct. 30, 2015), during a “debt issuance suspension period” that Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew had declared on March 13, 2015 [2], to push back the date at which the debt limit would be exceeded.
In a July 29, 2015, letter to Speaker Boehner [3], Lew indicated he was planning to extend the then-ongoing debt issuance suspension period, and explained its basic operations.
“On March 16, 2015, the outstanding debt of the United States reached the statutory limit,” Lew wrote. “As a result, Treasury had to begin employing extraordinary measures to continue to finance the government on a temporary basis. These measures, which we have used in previous debt limit impasses, include a debt issuance suspension period with respect to investment of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and suspension of the daily reinvestment of Treasury securities held by the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan. The debt issuance suspension period currently lasts until July 30. Tomorrow, I expect to extend the debt issuance through October 30.”
According to the official summary of the law [4], Section 901 of the “Bipartisan Budget Act,” which Congress passed on Oct. 30 and Obama signed Nov. 2, provided that the “public debt limit is suspended through March 15, 2017.”
The $1,033,226,058,842.03 increase in the debt in the six months since then equals approximately $6,828 for each of the 151,320,000 persons whom the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated had a full or part-time job in the United States as of this March.
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