Obama’s ‘super-sized’ $4 trillion budget wouldn’t tame national debt

President Obama’s latest budget proposal paints a troubling picture of America’s fiscal future.

Here’s a startling snapshot:

— By 2024, the total national debt would rise from $17.4 trillion to nearly $25 trillion.

— By 2020, U.S. taxpayers would be paying more in interest on the debt than they would on the entire Defense budget.

— By 2017, those interest payments would be bigger than the budget for Medicaid.

Despite Democratic claims that President Obama has tackled the deficit, the numbers give a sense of what fiscal hawks — who have not given up their fight despite an election-year aversion to dealing with the debt — are so worried about.

“We can’t let election-year malaise be an excuse for inaction on such an important issue,” Maya MacGuineas, of the Fix the Debt Campaign, said in a statement.

White House officials appear to be declaring a victory of sorts over the deficit — which is the annual budget shortfall. A White House statement touted the fact that “the deficit has been cut in half as a share of the economy” under Obama.

It is true that under the budget blueprint, the 2015 deficit would shrink to $564 billion from $649 billion this year. That’s a sharp fall from year after year of $1 trillion-plus deficits during Obama’s first term.

But even when the deficit shrinks, the national debt — which basically is the nation’s ultra-platinum credit card tab — will continue to grow. A lot.

And every year the debt grows, the interest on that debt also grows, crowding out needed funding for everything from the military to education to infrastructure to entitlements.

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