Hope and change. It was the promise of a better future from Presidential nominee Barack Obama, a candidate that appealed to Millennials and sparked a massive grassroots movement on his road to the White House. But with a national debt of $17 trillion and growing, is this the hope and change so many voted for?
President Obama wooed young Americans from the mountains of Colorado to the beaches of Florida with his message — and it worked. Millennials showed up in record numbers to make phone calls, knock on doors and campaign for the community organizer from Chicago. And on Election Night in 2008, Senator Obama became President, addressing the country from Grant Park as millions witnessed history, the promise of hope and change now a reality.
But five years later, the hope has died and the change, well the change has grown exponentially — to $17 trillion. And that’s a lot of change.
In President Obama’s first four years in office, the national debt grew tremendously from $10.626 trillion on President George W. Bush’s last day in office — and Obama’s first — to $15.566 trillion. Obama was quick to blame the soaring debt on his predecessor, but just yesterday the national debt hit yet another milestone.
One day after the government shutdown officially ended with an 11th-hour budget deal, the national debt surpassed $17 trillion, jumping a record $328 billion. Fiscally irresponsible lawmakers and President Obama collectively breathed a sigh of relief and went back on borrowing, blowing through the sequester-mandated spending levels.
According to The Orange County Register, each citizens’ share of the national debt is $54,000, and at the end of the day, that’s falling on my back. And yours.
In a recent interview with Red Alert Politics, Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) said her biggest fear for the future is her college-aged children being saddled with such tremendous debt as taxpayers. And it’s a sentiment echoed by many other lawmakers throughout the Republican Party. But the federal government keeps on borrowing.
President Obama won in 2008 with 66 percent of the youth vote and 60 percent in 2012 compared to Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 36 percent. But young people just aren’t seeing the fiscal damage Obama’s policies inflict on the economy and on them. And it will hurt in the future.
As the American Enterprise Institute’s Jim Pethokoukis reported, the government’s record spending rates could cause the American people to be taxed even more for a federal government “that will more purely become a redistribution, wealth-transfer mechanism.”
But maybe people are starting to pay attention.
According to a September Gallup poll, 75 percent of likely voters say the economy is a very important issue. Sixty-seven percent rank government spending with the same designation. But not long after the President signed the budget deal, he announced what his priority would be: immigration. And the percentage of Americans who think immigration is a very important issue: 51 percent.
It’s time young people, the same young people who voted for hope and change, demand more. It’s time to look ahead at the financial burden the government puts on their shoulders, because $17 trillion in change is not the change they voted for.
