Terry Jeffrey, CNS, “Debt Has Climbed $4.47T Since Obama Released First Budget—Calling for ‘A New Era of Responsibility’”:

On Feb. 26, 2009, as Obama released his budget for fiscal 2010, the national debt stood at $10.88 trillion (10,881,159,722,022.36). At the close of business on Feb. 9, 2012, the national debt stood at $15.36 trillion ($15,355,838,921,022.16). That represents an increase in the debt of $4.47 trillion ($4,474,679,198,999.80).

The $4.47-trillion increase in the debt since Obama released his first budget is more than the national debt increased from President George Washington through President George H. W. Bush, who left office on Jan. 20, 1993. At the end of fiscal 1993 (on Sept. 30, 1993, the national debt stood at $4.41 trillion ($4,411,488,883,139.38), according to the U.S. Treasury.

“Government has failed to fully confront the deep, systemic problems that year after year have only become a larger and larger drag on our economy,” Obama said in his first budget message in February 2009. “From the rising costs of health care to the state of our schools, from the need to revolutionize how we power our economy to our crumbling infrastructure, policymakers in Washington have chosen temporary fixes over lasting solutions.

“The time has come to usher in a new era—a new era of responsibility in which we act not only to save and create new jobs, but also to lay a new foundation of growth upon which we can renew the promise of America,” said Obama.

Who knew that “a new era of responsibility” would mean a more powerful and concentrated centralized authority looking to usher in the next era of progressive command-and-control economics by way of attacking the free market, laundering wealth (or “revenue”) through the State, and rewarding cronies and supporters with huge “stimulus” monies that produced nothing of lasting value but crushing debt, greater unemployment, and a full-frontal assault on wage-earners, while propping up industries that won’t work and who roll out expensive products we don’t want?

Well, besides those of us who looked at Obama’s record — that is, what we could find of it — and his lifelong ideological marination in radical leftwing politics before he was elected and openly hoped he’d fail at his goal of “fundamental transformation,” I mean.

But still: how were we to know?

Meanwhile, Obama’s latest budget — which asks to borrow and additional $1.3 Trillion (“paid for” by tax increases on “the rich” over 10 years) and does nothing to address unsustainable entitlement programs and unfunded liabilities — will likely be touted as an attempt to usher in a new new era of responsibility, one in which the rich pay their fair share so that the poor don’t have to suffer under draconian cuts to government services, and one in which Congress does its job and agrees to do as the President says when he says it, and without a lot of lip. Because we can’t wait, and we don’t intend to. And if that means an imperial Presidency that is forced to disregard checks and balances entirely, well —

Yes you will!