Senate Budget Committee Republicans compared GDP growth over the last two years to the growth of the national debt: “President Obama said that increasing the debt limit does not increase the debt. But when the Treasury department started using so-called extraordinary measures to avoid a breach of the debt ceiling in May, 2011, the debt limit stood at $14,294 billion. Today it stands at $16,699 billion…. That’s a $2,405 billion increase in 2 years. Meanwhile, the economy, as measured by GDP only increased by $1,199 billion between the second quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of this year. So the debt increased twice as much as the economy over the last two years, the very definition of unsustainable.”