National Debt Growing by $3 Million a Minute

The national debt is now growing by $3 million a minute and has increased by $4 trillion under President Barack Obama. When Obama took office the debt stood at $10.626 trillion and the Treasury Department now shows the debt has reached $14.639 trillion, CBS News reports.

The rise of the debt under Obama is the most rapid of any president. The national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the presidency of George W. Bush, but that took eight years. Obama should surpass that in his four-year term, according to CBS.

The Los Angeles Times crunched the numbers even further and found the debt is now growing by $3 million a minute.

During “last week's three-day Midwestern tour in the president's new $1.1 million Death Star bus (the) National debt went up $16,988,000,000 while he rode around speaking and buying ice cream cones,” the paper’s Top of the Ticket political blog by Andrew Malcolm notes.

Obama has placed much of the blame for the debt increase on the Bush administration’s two wars, tax cuts, a new drug program for seniors, and the recession.

The Gross National Debt now stands at 97.6 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, which is the total value of goods and services produced by labor and property in the United States, CBS reports.