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$14 Trillion Debt: Both Parties Responsible
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Two centuries after America’s birth, the national debt was a bit under $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.
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If the tab were divided up now, it would come to roughly $47,000 for each man, woman and child in the United States.
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In fact, spending far outpaced revenues in both the Bush and Obama years. And the main culprit in addition to war spending was the devastating 2007-2009 recession, which not only prompted hundreds of billions of dollars in downturn-fighting spending by both the Bush and Obama administrations, but also resulted in a sharp dip in tax revenues due to sagging individual and corporate incomes.
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The national debt should not be confused with the federal budget deficit, which is only a one-year slice. The deficit is the difference between what the government spends in a given year and what it takes in. In the budget year that ends Sept. 30, the deficit is expected to be a record $1.5 trillion. At that level, for every $1 the government spends, it must borrow about 42 cents.
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“America’s finances were in great shape by the year 2000. We went from deficit to surplus. America was actually on track to becoming completely debt-free, and we were prepared for the retirement of the baby boomers,” Obama said. “But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed.”
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It broke through the $1 trillion mark (that’s a $1 followed by 12 zeroes) in 1981, the first year of the Reagan’s presidency. But despite Reagan’s vow to balance the budget, the debt tripled during his two terms, to just over $3 trillion under the weight of a recession, large tax cuts and increased spending.
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According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the Bush-era tax breaks for the nation’s top earners, combined with the costs of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will account for nearly half the public debt in 2019 when measured as a percentage of economic output.
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WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NATIONAL DEBT? | WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
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“The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.” Spiro Agnew U. S. Vice-President Source: 13 November 1969
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Past & Present: Alexander Hamilton and the Start of the National Debt – US News and World Report
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But he would, I suspect, not be happy with what borrowed money is being used for. Hamilton saw the debt as a powerful means of fighting wars, building infrastructure, and getting through economic bad times. For the last 30 years and more, however, the national debt has been increasingly used so that no one in Washington ever has to say no to anyone.
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Burt Folsom — Where History, Money, and Politics Collide
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What do John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford have in common? Answer: They were the wealthiest men in the U.S. during their lifetimes, which spanned roughly one hundred years. And all four of these men were born in poverty.
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What if We Had No National Debt?
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In 1829, President Andrew Jackson wrote, “It appears to me that the most safe, just, and federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue, would be its apportionment among the several states according to their ratio of representation.” In other words, give the money back to the states, with the more populous states getting more back than the smaller states. Sure, some congressmen wanted to spend the surplus revenue in their districts, but the majority in the House and Senate chose to give the money back to the states.
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US Federal Debt – Charts Tables History
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Under Alexander Hamilton’s funding system the debt was paid off by 1840
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$46,869.51.
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“The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled.” -Cicero. 106-43 B.C.
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The National Debt is the total amount of money owed by the government; the federal budget deficit is the yearly amount by which spending exceeds revenue. Add up all the deficits (and subtract those few budget surpluses we’ve had) for the past 200+ years and you’ll get the current National Debt.
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The National Debt on January 1st 1791 was just $75 million dollars. Today, it rises by that amount every hour or so
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On October 18th 2005, the Outstanding Public Debt rose to $8,003,897,406,911.24 — the first time it had risen above $8 trillion.
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(Click on any graph in this paper to get a larger view.)
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he Hamiltonians won, the conservatives of their time, and consequently it has also been argued that this difference between these two founders was the beginning of the liberal/conservative split in our country.
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He got it down to $18,000 just before leaving office.
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Jackson did not believe in debt, or banks for that matter, and he made a real effort to eliminate all federal debt.
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It is clear that debt increases from every major war, and it’s equally clear to see that the debt is hardly ever reduced. Even when it is reduced it ain’t by much, or for very long.
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because this nation does not pay its debt off, ever!
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Since 1938 the Democrats have held the White house for 35 years, the Republicans for 36
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Those averages aren’t that far apart, but they do show a bias toward more borrowing by Republicans than Democrats even including World War II.
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However the debt has been on a steady incline ever since the Reagan presidency.
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For the first eighteen years after WW II, Truman (1945-53), Eisenhower (1953-61) and Kennedy (1961-63) all worked vigorously to keep spending under control. Of the seven years Truman was in office, the national debt came down in four. In 1946 & 7, with a Republican Congress for his first two years in office he brought down spending. The following year, with a Democratic Congress he reduced what was commonly called the “War Debt” again. Two of the eight years Eisenhower served as President saw debt reduction during the years when Democrats were in charge of Congress, 1956 & 7. Kennedy reduced the debt by over 4% his first year in office, 1961, then it went up slightly his next two years. JFK was dealing with a Democratically controlled House and Senate when he managed to reduce the debt.
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They talk about it a lot, but they never deliver.
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While the debt did go up every year during Johnson’s time in office (1963-69), he was the last president before Clinton to submit a balanced budget, and Johnson did this during a time of a very hot Cold War. Johnson’s average was a debt increase of 3% for the six years he served. He had a Democratic Congress to work with all his years in office.
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It appears that the frequently referenced Reagan’s Conservative mythology is contrary to the truth, he was an award winning, record setting liberal spender and government grower.
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but he never pushed through any reduced spending programs. H
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In 1993 President Clinton inherited the deficit spending problem and did more than just talk about it; he fixed it. I
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With the help of a Republican controlled Congress he immediately gave a massive tax cut based on a failed economic policy; perhaps an economic fantasy describes it better. The last year Mr. Clinton was in office the nation borrowed 18 billion dollars. The first year Mr. Bush II was in office he had to borrow 133 billion[8].
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History has shown that the “trickle down theory” does not work.
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Tax cuts for the rich did not work and things got worse. (We are seeing the same problem repeat itself encouraged by the deregulation of the financial industry.)
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Mr. Clinton took a more progressive approach and, as Roosevelt had done, turned the Hoover model upside down. Instead of making the rich richer in the hope that they would spend that money and thus create demand and therefore jobs, he created a tax environment that encouraged the creation of jobs directly. It was an economic environment where everyone could get rich, not just a few, and it worked. Lots of jobs and lots of new millionaires were created while Clinton was in office. More new millionaires were created during the Clinton administration than at any other time in our history.
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“All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills…”
US Constitution, Article 1, Section 7
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United Sates; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States:…”
US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8
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The chart confirms that the Neo-Cons got control of both Houses of Congress in 1995, and singular control of our government from 2000 to 2006, and yet, as the debt charts prove in Figures 1 & 3 above, even with all that power in 12 years they never controlled spending.
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As the Middle Class inevitably shrinks in America there will be a very negative effect on sales of everything, thus lowering the GDP. As the GDP shrinks the massive national debt will only grow into more of a burden on the jobless next generation who will have to deal with it, because the current generation has failed to. It is obvious that not dealing with the massive debt now could very well crush our nation’s future economy.
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1. Since the Neo-Conservative movement has become the dominant force in the Republican Party the national debt has grown and continues to grow at an unsustainable rate, by any measure you care to use.
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The only time we have seen national debt reduction in the past 60 years was when Democrats were totally in charge of our government or when one party was in the White House and another ran Congress.
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In the past 60 years when Republicans were in control of the presidency and both Houses of Congress, neither debt, nor government spending was ever reduced. The last time a Republican Congress reduced the national debt was in 1947, under Truman’s leadership.
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The last time the debt was reduced was in 1961 during President Kennedy’s first year in office. It has been almost a half century, 46 years, since this nation has paid down any of its exponentially increasing debt. (Had President Bill Clinton been in office one more year we would probably have seen a debt decrease in 2001.)
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The current form of national debt was started in 1791 and it was US$75 million. This may seem a small amount of money but it represented about 40 per cent of the US’s gross national product
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The national debt has tended to keep on growing. The national debt reached a new high in 1804 when the US Government bought the Louisiana territory off France (the “Louisiana Purchase”) for US$11.25 million. Ironically, Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the new Constitution, hated debt but the French offer was too good to refuse.
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In the 1830s, the national debt went down to its lowest ever level: US$37,513. This was due both to President Andrew Jackson being very frugal and to the US Government selling land for development purposes.
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Generally speaking the national debt has gone down in times of peace and gone up in times of war. The national debt increased by 21 times in World War I and six times in World War II.
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The longest sustained period of debt reduction occurred after the Civil War (1861-5) to 1893, when the US Government ran a budget surplus every year and cut the debt to about a third of initial value. This resulted in more money in circulation for private expenditure and so contributed to the booming US economy. By the beginning of the 20th century all this growth meant that the US had become of the world’s main economies.
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The national debt in 1946 – the year after the war ended – was 128 per cent of gross national product.
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For two years during the eight years of the Eisenhower Government in the 1950s, the US Government even ran at a surplus.
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he Reagan Administration (1982-88) had the largest military build up in peacetime US history and this added to the national debt.
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In the late 1990s, Clinton was speculating on what could be done about the first lot of budget surpluses since the Eisenhower Administration. In June 1999, Clinton said that if the current rate of annual government budget surpluses could be maintained, then the entire national debt could be paid off by 2015.
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Clinton Administration’s greatest achievements. It ran four consecutive budget surpluses.
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President George W Bush increased the annual government deficits by both introducing tax cuts and raising defence expenditure. The War on Terrorism and the cost of rebuilding Iraq are adding to the national debt.
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Posts 08/09/2011
The Gregarious Phat Man 