Below is a great graphic published by the Boston Globe back on 31-Jul-2011. (I’d link to it but the Globe site is the poster-child for sucky web sites and the graphic would certainly go away some time soon; since this graphic is so good, it deserves to continue to see the light of day longer than the Globe site would otherwise allow it to be linked to.)
The reason I think this graphic is so good is because it clearly shows how the debt was “acquired” – or how we got stuck with it. You can’t look at something like this and not keep in mind that it charts absolute dollars and therefore, the fact that in all of our nations history prior to Ronald Reagan, we accumulated “only” 1 trillion of debt shouldn’t be so surprising. On the other hand, the rapid progression of debt is not solely explained by simply considering inflation. Clearly, we’ve been increasing our spending faster than we’ve increased our income.
But the most telling thing about our debt that is easy to see in this graphic is that the primary source of the debt was incurred during Republican Presidents. Ordinarily, being the moderate nonpartisan type that I am, I’d shrug and move on. But considering the current partisan nonsense from the Republicans about how they are the party of fiscal responsibility and how it is the Democrats who just want to spend, spend, spend, a graphic like this is just what we need to slap a little reality back into the debate.
Ronald Reagan, the godhead of current conservatism started the ball rolling by running up nearly twice the debt of all who had preceded him. As I wrote above, inflation accounts for part of that, but it’s important to remember that Reagan wasn’t about balancing budgets or making numbers work – he was about spurring the economy and he did that by incurring lots of debt.
Reagan managed 1.9 trillion debt in 8 years and his successor, Bush 41, managed 1.5 trillion in just 4 years! Directly following Bush 41, Clinton managed to incur less debt in his 8 years than Bush 41 one did in his 4. In fact, Clinton managed to operate with a budget surplus for his last 3 years making him the first President to run a surplus in 29 years and the first President to do it 3 years in a row in 49 years (which is even a little unfair considering that was during WWII meaning the surplus had more to do with a wartime economy than clever Presidential economic policy).
Bush 43 is far and away the record holder at 6.1 trillion of debt. A large chunk of that is from the two wars, it is true. I know it is still debatable but history seems to be settling on the side that the Iraq war was unnecessary and therefore a good chunk of that debt was optional. Furthermore, Bush 43 did a lot to reduce government income making the debt during his tenure even worse. Bush 43 was certainly not solely responsible for the economic “Great Recession” that started Obama’s Presidency but then he also can’t claim to have stopped it. And therefore, Bush 43’s economic policy was definitely not strong enough to fend off a recession.
And now Obama’s tenure already has him at 2.4 trillion. As the graphic notes, 1.1 of that is with a stimulus and as much as the current haters complain that “it didn’t work”, it does seem obvious that without the stimulus, we’d be worse off. In other words, if you subtract 1.1 trillion for stimulus, do you get 1.3 trillion of new debt under Obama? I think it’d be higher because of greater economic woes. But regardless, the train was already rolling with Bush 43 in charge and Obama is trying to wrestle that train to a halt. But it’s hard with people like Boener trying to throw him off the train and keep the debt train motoring on by not allowing Bush’s tax policies to expire. Remember, these were only meant to be temporary and even then, they were significant contributors to our current debt.
And one final analsysis. Of our current 14.3 trillion of debt, 6.1 was incurred by Bush 43 and 1.5 by Bush 41. That’s a total of 7.8 or more than half of all of our nation’s debt. Half of the debt load we have today is due to one father and son pair. Or even more if you consider the lasting debt obligations that Bush 43 put in place contrasting that with the quick dismantling of the surplus Clinton had left him.
So let’s not let the current Reubplican machine whitewash history and have you believe that the Democrats are fiscally irresponsible because they want a balanced approach to curtail deficit spending. Let’s be honest about where the debt comes from, that a lot of the Republicans responsible for the debt are the same ones active in congress today, and let’s let Obama apply the brakes on the debt train.