This all might be a bit off topic on a medical related thread, but it does tie in a bit.
Who is responsible for debt is complex and to an extent subjective. Do you count congress more than the president? That seems reasonable to me, but I wouldn't say the president has no role. Also do you count people who started new programs that later turned out to be very expensive? I would say yes, if so than FDR (who already had large deficits, but OTOH he did have to deal with the depression and WWII), and Johnson get more blame than the chart shows. Also you have to take in to account the conditions. This helps FDR the most (he had the biggest issues to deal with and so the most reason to run a deficit), but than Bush had the bursting of the tech stock bubble, arguably the bursting of a housing bubble (although the bubble wasn't as over inflated, and at least so far as not totally burst), 9/11, Katrina, etc. And a lot of the deficit spending involves interst on past debt which complicates things
But the biggest problem with the chart is that it represents the deficit in nominal dollars. A dollar today is worth less than a dollar in the past. a lot less than in WWII (FDR's debt was a much more serious issue than Bush's debt, but the chart makes it seem much less serious). Also even if there was no inflation and dollars where always worth the same a bigger economy running the same percentage deficit would have a bigger deficit.
Of course even expressed in terms of how big of part of the economy the debt represents, Bush's deficits and debt have been high, but not extraordinarily so. |
