It's official: The Obama administration has now borrowed $3 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. It took from 1776, when the United States became an independent country, until 1990, the year after the Berlin Wall fell signaling victory in the Cold War, for the federal government to accumulate a total of $3 trillion in debt, according to the Treasury Department. It only took from Jan. 20, 2009, the day President Barack Obama was inaugurated, until Oct. 15, 2010, for the Obama administration to add $3 trillion to the federal debt.
The overall debt of the federal government, according to the Treasury Department, is now $13.666 trillion.
Each business day, in the afternoon, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt publishes the exact amount—to the penny--of total federal debt as of the close of the previous business day.
At the close of business on Jan. 20, 2009, according to the bureau, the total debt of the federal government was $10,626,877,048,913.08. On Oct. 15, 2010, the federal government borrowed an additional $58,979,549,154.06, bringing the total federal debt at the close of Friday’s business day to $13,665,926,643,255.96—an increase of $3,039,049,594,342.88 since President Obama’s inauguration.
As calculated by the Bureau of the Public Debt, the total federal debt includes two major components: debt held by the public, which includes publicly traded securities such as Treasury bonds, and intragovernmental debt, which is money the government borrows from theoretically dedicated funds within the government itself, such as the Social Security trust fund.
The overwhelming majority of the $3.039 trillion increase in the debt under President Obama has come in the form of debt held by the public as opposed to intragovernmental debt.
Debt held by the public has increased $2.75196 trillion since Obama was inaugurated, according to the Bureau of Public Debt, while intragovernmnetal debt has increased 287.0889 billion.
