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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: KyrosL who wrote (61183)4/23/2008 7:56:51 PM
From: Oeconomicus  Read Replies (1) of 542449
 
Depends on whether you're looking at gross debt or debt held by the public. The latter doesn't include debt from one part of the government to another - e.g. the IOUs in the social security trust fund. Better to look directly at consolidated deficit numbers, even though the SS surplus skews them a bit, because that's what any politician or journalist is referring to when they talk about federal deficits.

Here's a graph of the nominal deficit since 1980:


Try to ballpark the fiscal years applicable to each president and then overlay the effective dates of tax cuts or hikes (1983, IIRC, and 2003 for cuts. I forget when the hikes hit.).

I haven't found good graphs of real dollar deficits or as a percent of GDP.

FYI, here are graphs of federal debt, gross and that held by the public (in log scale):

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