We're talking TOTAL National Debt. The debt ACCUMULATED over 224 YEARS before Bush came into office.
Again meaningless. A dollar now is worth a lot less than a dollar hundreds, or even tens of years ago. And our economy is a lot larger, and thus able to more easily sustain larger real deficits.
Deficits under other presidents before Bush where a lot larger than Bush's by the measurement that matters, percentage of GDP. Of course they also usually had more justification for the large deficits (WWI, WWII, etc.) and the deficits caused by the wars where more of a temporary issue, while in recent years its entitlements that are driving federal spending, so despite being smaller Bush's deficits where in many ways more problematic, but the fact that they are so problematic has nothing to do with the ratio of nominal dollar debt accumulated when Bush was president, compared to the nominal dollar debt accumulated before him.
Another problem with using such ratio is that if the debt gets almost paid down it makes the next presidents debt look worse, when actually it would be more of a problem if the debt was high to begin with.
Imagine we had never paid down any of the WWII debt, that there wasn't a single year of surplus once the depression started, and that the national debt was higher when Bush came in to office. Your method of categorizing the debt would show the trillions added during Bush's time in office would then be less of a problem, but that's nonsense, it would be much more of a problem.
You have to SERVICE that debt...and when it costs you more for INTEREST than it does for National Defense it's a BIG DEAL...
The cost to service the debt it a much more important issue than comparisons with previous debt or deficits. So now at least your addressing a vital point. But your still doing it in a poor way. If we doubled defense spending next year, your method of presenting the burden of the debt would make it seem like much less of a problem, when actually it would be much more of a problem.
In general you keep wanting to make such comparisons, but they don't mean very much. It would be much better to just point out the size of the debt, and the cost of debt service, both in dollars and percentage of the GDP. By such measure "Bush's" deficits where high, and our debt is high. Also by such measures "Obama's" deficits will be higher, and our debt will climb. Nothing that Bush did absolves Obama, and nothing Obama will do absolves Bush. Both are responsible for contributing to the problem, pointing out one isn't a defense of the other. Its just that both should be pointed out rather than focusing on just one like partisans from both sides seem prone to do.
One way or another we are going to have to start living within our MEANS....
Leaving within our means implies reducing the growth of spending, even if we had no federal government debt, and if future deficits could be managed by tax increases. The spending is problematic in and of itself, then it also contributes to the problem of the deficits/debt. |
