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Fiscal watchdogs and Republican lawmakers are expressing dismay at new figures showing the US debt has now exceeded the nation's economic output.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US gross domestic product reached $15.17 trillion at the end of the third quarter 2011. That number is higher today, though a formal report on fourth quarter 2011 growth still has yet to be released. But with the national debt currently at $15.23 trillion and set to go up with the president's latest debt ceiling increase, the 100 percent GDP-to-debt threshold has been reached.

It is like watching a horror movie," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told WOKV-AM in Jacksonville on Monday. "You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, 'Don't go in that door!' because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends."

What does 100 percent debt-to-GDP spell? Not quite Greece, though, it's not far off from what sank the European nation.

"The Greek economy is broken. The US economy is not broken," said former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of American Action Network.

"But if we were so foolish to do things as we are now," the US economy will break, Holtz-Eakin warned, noting that the debt is equal to the median income of Americans 300 million times over.

"Every American (would have) to give up a year of income to pay it off," he said of the debt.

A White House official who asked not to be named noted that Obama already has a detailed plan for a balanced approach to cutting $4 trillion in federal red ink.

The White House, supported by congressional Democrats, often points to the recession and soaring debt it inherited from the George W. Bush administration to explain why it had to dive into deficit spending.

But in his 2008 run for office, then-Sen. Barack Obama said stopping the deficit spending is the first step to recovery. "The first thing you do when you're in a hole is what? ... You stop digging. So the first thing that we're going to have to do is to stop adding to our deficit," he said.

Republicans readily point to that statement as they blame the massive increase in debt on Obama's economic stimulus plan and health care reform measures -- $5 trillion during this administration as the Treasury Department's own figures show.

(Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)