For the fourth year in a row, the US budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.  Slow economic growth did help cut the deficit by 207  billion dollars compared to last year but that is little consolation.  According to the treasury department, “job growth plus an increase in paid corporate taxes, helped increase government receipts by 6.4% over last year”.  However, President Obama promised to halve the deficit by the end of his first term.  To be accurate, I quote the words of the President from 2009, “today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected.  But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”  Clearly that promise has not been fulfilled.  In fact, it’s been an unmitigated failure.  This can’t be blamed on Republicans because if the President had handled this correctly, he would have made this an issue.  He could have simply said, I pledge to cut the deficit, this is my cost slashing budget proposal and the Republicans have refused to negotiate.  Placing the onus on Republicans would have allowed him to save face.  But instead, we are facing the fourth year in a row of trillion-dollar deficits.  What the President doesn’t understand, and this is where his lack of business acumen comes in to play, is stimulus money, that increases the debt without slashing other spending, won’t help the long-term financial health of the country.  As these trillion-dollar deficits continue, the US becomes ever more trapped in the quicksand of debt and it will be more and more difficult to pull ourselves out.  In 2012, the government borrowed 31 cents of every dollar it spent.  The national debt now sits above $16 trillion.  This is a great talking point for the Republicans and an issue they can dominate if they explain it clearly to the American people.  The way to decrease the debt is not to raise taxes but to lower unemployment and cut spending.  That, in combination with a thriving private sector, will contribute more than enough revenue, even at the present tax rates.