Brooklyn Young Republicans Say Romney Must 'Hit Home Run' at Tonight's Debate' (Then Screw Up Deficit Math)

Glenn P. Nocera, president of the Brooklyn Young Republicans, came out with a statement saying that in tonight's Presidential debate, Mitt Romney "needs to hit a home run with the American people, if he has any hope of being elected President on election day."

That's probably true.

Nocera also says: "Obama took office with a 10.6 Trillion dollar deficit. Now its over 16 Trillion dollars. He doubled it in Four years."

Hmmn, seems to be a little problem with the math here. 10.6 times 2 is 21.2, not 16.

But there's another inaccuracy.

According to Factcheck.org:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the fiscal year 2009 deficit at $1.2 trillion two weeks before Obama took office.

In an April 2011 report, the CBO said the deficit for fiscal year 2010 was nearly $1.3 trillion and the estimated deficit for the current budget is $1.4 trillion.

Here's a page from the blog of the Congressional Budget Office with some simple deficit figures.

What Nocera is probably thinking of is the national debt, not the annual deficit. Even before the economic crisis, the U.S. debt grew 50% between 2000 and 2007, ballooning from $6 to $9 trillion. The $700 billion bailout helped the debt grow to $10.5 trillion by December 2008, before Obama became President. (More on that here.)

So President Bush brought the debt from $6 to $10.5 trillion, and left an ongoing mess that had to be cleaned up with even more spending.

Emergency stimulus packages, military spending on wars started during the Bush years, tax cuts and unemployment benefit extentions (due to the recession) drove the debt up to $16 trillion this year.

See how much each president contributed to the national debt here.

And check out the horrifying U.S. Debt Clock here.

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