Communications

Memorandum

To: Interested Parties

From: Sean Spicer

Re: The Debt Message

Date: November 13, 2011

In the coming days, the country will cross an unthinkable threshold.  Our nation’s debt will pass the $15 trillion mark. In less than 3 years, President Obama has racked up $4.4 trillion of debt—increasing our debt over 40 percent.

What’s the GOP message on this troubling milestone?  To quote the President himself: “That’s irresponsible.” 

Between now and next November, the debt piled up by Obama will be a major theme of the RNC’s messaging strategy.  We will create messages and build events around this theme. Our goal will be to constantly remind the American people of the President’s failure and hypocrisy on reducing the country’s debt.

To put $15 trillion in perspective:

• $15 trillion is more than America’s GDP – the value of all goods and services produced in a year
• Paying back $15 trillion in debt would require every dollar of government revenue for 6.5 years
• Each citizen’s share is roughly $14,000 - $48,000 more than 3 years ago
• 15 trillion one-dollar bills would wrap around the earth 58,000 times

According to the non-partisan group Politifact, President Obama is now “the undisputed debt king of the last five presidents.”

That “Debt King” once promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

He also declared that $4 trillion in deficit spending over 8 years was “unpatriotic.” 

If that’s “unpatriotic,” what is $4.4 trillion of debt over 3 years? Certainly not hope or change.

Strategically speaking, Obama’s massive debt will remain an especially salient campaign issue for a number of reasons:

• Poll after poll shows Americans consider government spending an important political issue
• It represents a major broken promise
• It has real implications for the health of our economy
• It is the number one cause of our embarrassing credit downgrade
• It saddles our children with an increasingly bleak future

The American people took the President at his word when he said he would cut the deficit in half. He broke his promise and ran up three annual deficits of over $1 trillion dollars. We must and we will drive this message as a major theme.

Fueled by a stimulus that failed to keep unemployment below 8 percent, a healthcare bill that failed to cut costs and an insatiable appetite to grow government, the growth of the U.S. national debt will only continue to accelerate.  And as it does, so too does the GOP momentum for 2012. 

Americans know this path is unsustainable and the Republican Party will provide them a President who understands that as well.

###

Text "RECLAIM" To 91919 To Join The GOP Mobile Army