The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported on Friday that the budget deficit for 2012 was $1.1 trillion and was only $200 billon less than 2011's deficit because Oct.1, 2011 fell on a weekend. The Hill noted, "without the assistance from the calendar, the deficit in 2012 would have been $30 billion larger than reported."
Every year President Obama has been in office, the annual deficit has been above $1 trillion despite the president's promise to cut the annual deficit in half in his first term. The country's debt is over $16 trillion.
Mitt Romney called Obama out on his most glaring failed campaign promise during Wednesday's debate.
"The president said he'd cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it," Romney said. "Trillion-dollar deficits for the last four years. The president's put in place as much public debt -- almost as much debt held by the public as all prior presidents combined."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also took Obama and Senate Democrats to task on Friday. He said that while "Americans have been looking for leadership from the White House," Obama's budget plan "was so unserious that it was rejected by every single member of Congress."
“Never before have a President and a majority party in the Senate done so little to address challenges as great as the ones our nation faces right now," McConnell said. "Every single year the President has been in office, the nation has racked up a deficit of over $1 trillion, and now we have an unsustainable $16 trillion debt.
"Yet, Senate Democrats haven’t bothered to put together a budget in three years... It’s time for leadership, time for a much different approach to get our economy growing and our nation on a sustainable path.”
Big Government
