One of the big Republican talking points in this election will be "debts exploding under Obama". This is grossly misleading. Never mind that Obama inherited a $1.4 trillion deficit from Bush, who put together the fiscal year 2009 budget, and deficits have gone down since then.
In fact, total debt owed by Americans has not increased significantly under Obama at all. It has increased far less than under the Bush and Clinton administrations.
Total debt, including that owed by federal government debt plus state and local governments, corporations, mortgage holders, credit card holders, student loans, have been falling relative to the size of the economy under Obama. The "budget deficit" figures you hear reported in the media only include federal government debt. It does not take into account the broader measures of debt. The broader measure is a more accurate account of the "national debt" and what our children will be on the hook for.
Why should the President get credit or, or be on the hook for private sector debts? Because irresponsible private sector borrowing can mask horrendous government deficits and vice versa. Under the Bush years, official government deficits were only in the hundreds of billions, but because when a bank made a loan for $720,000 to a Mexican strawberry picker with a $14,000 annual income (remember that?) to buy a house and the seller spent that $720,000, government collected tax revenue on the sale. And the government collected tax revenue from the construction workers' salaries. And government collected tax revenue when the seller spent the $720,000 on other things, stimulating demand and jobs. Multiply this by hundreds of thousands of times, and you see what foundation those Bush revenues were built on. A President who oversees that kind of insanity and doesn't do something to stop it, doesn't speak out against it with the bully pulpit, is exercising the ultimate fiscal irresponsibility.
Under Obama by contrast the private sector is deleveraging. A lot of that is just people defaulting on their loans. That's fine; bad loans were made, and default is inevitable. But that's also painful. It means the housing market is in bad shape, the banks are afraid to lend, people are not spending because they are paying down their mortgages and their credit cards. That means fewer jobs, and more people collecting unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other social safety net provisions. At this time when the government deficit spends to stimulate the economy, all it's doing is cushioning the blow. Exactly what it is supposed to do.