I’m looking for a chart showing which presidents are responsible for national debt. Does this look fake, exaggerated, or incorrect?
(Why, because I wanted a chart to show someone that Obama isn’t the root cause of the national debt, and I found this and was actually quite shocked)
It’s true, but misleading, since Congress appropriates money, plus there are policies implemented decades ago that control mandatory spending like Medicare and Social Security.
It’d be a lot more meaningful if it were adjusted for inflation as well.
Thanks, its probably good enough to show the person I’m ‘debating’ with in hopes they will understand not to just blame Obama, but sigh, that’s more depressing than I thought, even if it was half as bad as it looks in the chart, it makes me feel like we’re doomed.
There’s a case for blaming Obama: he’s consistently requested $200 billion more than Congress has been willing to give him. To the extent the deficit has shrunk, it’s been entirely due to Congress since 2011.
Cite on Obama proposing to make the deficit $200 billion worse per year (and Congress rejecting such proposals)?
See requested(Obama) vs. actual(Congress)
Ah, I see how you’re getting that, but you’re making a key assumption that results in an error.
When the President submits his budget in February of each year, there’s about a trillion dollars worth of actual budget proposals, two and a half trillion dollars of estimates of costs of mandatory programs that Congress basically never touches, and maybe a few dozens of billions of proposed changes to mandatory programs.
When you look on Wikipedia and see that one year’s proposed budget of, say, $3.5 trillion in spending actually ended up being $3.3 trillion when the fiscal year actually ended 18 months later, that does not mean that Congress cut the budget by $200 billion. I guarantee you they did not.
What you’re seeing is that estimates for mandatory spending always, always, always err a little bit on the high side, plus the slowly improving economy over those years also reduced claims in mandatory programs (e.g., spending on unemployment programs and food stamps have gone down slightly faster than budget projections made 18-24 months earlier).
In terms of discretionary spending, Congress and the President have agreed on spending levels just over $1 trillion annually for the past several years since the 2011 budget deal. In fact, spending under this deal has actually gone up by roughy $20 billion per year since the sea was struck, offset by cuts to mandatory programs in the 2020s.
The clear facts are:
And if it pointed out that each successive president’s portion of the graph is affected by debt servicing prior presidents’ debts.
The more useful graph would be of the deficit, anyway, not of the debt. If a President (really, the whole government) inherits a large debt, they can’t make it go away without many, many years of hard work, but if they inherit a large deficit, they can bring it to zero instantly if they so choose (of course, they almost never do, but they can).
It only goes to 2011 and he was stuck with both the two wars started by you know who and fighting what should really be called a depression, also a legacy. I’d like to see it carried forth to 2016. Also should be adjusted for inflation. Actually, what I would like to see is how it compares to the GDP. Notice that it went down in the last Clinton years.
You probably don’t remember this, but 16 years ago there was a big discussion of how to deal with the budget surplus. Basically, reduce the debt or cut taxes. Bush adopted the second (but basically most of the cutting to the wealthiest) and started two wars. With the obvious result.
As mentioned, the chart is a bit out of date - the national debt is currently a bit over $19.5 trillion.
That’s easily done. Cite. Thru almost all the Bush years, it was below the 40 year average. Thru almost all the Obama years, it was over.
It is generally agreed that Congress has much more to do with the deficit than the President, which is why the budget was in surplus after the GOP took over Congress, even though the Democratic President at the time proposed $200 billion deficits as far as the eye could see.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, Congress has the primary fiscal power under the Constitution. However, the idea that it was Republican Congresses that produced budget surpluses is a political opinion, not a factual conclusion. The prevailing opinion is actually that the high rates of economic growth from the mid-1990s resulted in the budget surpluses far more than any change in the government’s fiscal policies (regardless if you wish to attribute those policies to the Republican Congress or the Democratic President).
Though I will clearly leave this as opinion, there are quite a few who credit the 1990 budget deal between the Democratic Congress and the first Presidnt Bush as setting the stage for the surpluses in the following years. But again, to distinguish opinion from fact in this forum, my positive view of that budget deal is not an assertion of political consensus on that matter.
You’re ignoring the fact that Obama has tried to increase revenue (taxes), which Congress has blocked.
Getting back to the OP, debt as a dollar figure isn’t very meaningful. In addition to inflation, the size of our economy has grown considerably. It’s more useful to look at debt as a percentage of GDP.
Especially since the 2013 Sequestration was a bipartisan compromise, with Democrats demanding defense spending cuts in exchange for accepting non-defense spending cuts.
The historical revenue and outlays data would probably be more useful to you than a simple debt chart. For example, from the Congressional Budget Office: Budget and Economic Data | Congressional Budget Office
While discretionary spending has certainly been increasing, mandatory spending has been increasing at an even faster rate and is a significant factor in the budget deficits seen over the past couple decades.
Let’s not forget quantitative easing … $80 billion a month given to the large commercial banks for five years to keep them out of bankruptcy. But I digress, the statistics show that under both presidents the debt increased, perhaps we should look elsewhere for causation.
Yes, adjust for inflation, but also adjusted for population growth. We have nearly Americans now as when Nixon was President. Actually, percentage of GDP is probably a better metric because it not only accounts for inflation, and also population growth, but also increasing wealth. And, As others have pointed out, it’s not fair to blame the current government for interest being paid on debt racked up by previous governments. So, the ideal graph would be one that shows annual deficits, excluding interest on the debt, as a percentage of GDP.
But remember that some programs, like Social Security, are mandated by law and not subject to budgeting. So maybe we should only include the discretionary spending.
Also, the deficit is the difference between expenditures and revenue. You can argue that the former is something the government can directly control but the latter is not. So maybe it would be more fair to focus just on discretionary spending, as a percentage of GDP, without regard to how much it exceeds revenue.
And, don’t forget, looking at graphs like this starts with the unspoken assumption “debt is bad”, which is only mostly true for individuals/families and might be mostly false for entire countries. I’m just saying there’s room for discussion and disagreement on this point so it’s a bit disingenuous to simply assume that it’s true at the beginning of your discussion.
Anyway, to answer the OP, that graph sucks because it’s not even adjusted for inflation. But, in the bigger picture, anytime anyone makes a graph about anything, if there’s two ways to do it (one way which makes your side look good and one way which makes your side look bad), you can bet the person drawing the graph will choose the way which makes their own side look good.
That should have read “nearly twice as many Americans now”
This has literally nothing to do with the size of the national debt, at least for the purposes that the OP is inquiring about.
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