WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury Department said Tuesday that the national debt has topped $16 trillion, the result of chronic government deficits that have poured more than $50,000 worth of red ink onto federal ledgers for every man, woman and child in the United States.

The news was greeted with a round of press releases from Barack Obama’s GOP rivals, who used the grim-but-expected news to criticize the president for the government’s fiscal performance over his 3 1/2 years in office. Obama has presided over four straight years of trillion dollar-plus deficits after inheriting a weak economy from his predecessor, George W. Bush.