Debt to hit $16 trillion as DNC kicks off

Bad timing for Democrats: The gross national debt is set to hit $16 trillion Tuesday as the party’s convention gets under way, and Republicans are pouncing.

“This is a grim landmark for the United States,” Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. “That’s more government debt per person than Portugal, Italy, Spain or Greece. Yet the president seems strangely unconcerned.”

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod said the president’s economic plan would lower deficits by $4 trillion over a decade. But moving too aggressively, he added, could backfire.

"What's necessary is to stabilize the debt and then work from there," he said. "You can't balance the budget in the short term, because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy."

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated Sessions's position on the Budget Committee.