chart national debt by president
Why do Republican presidents drive up the US national debt?
The US national debt always goes up when a Republican is in charge, and goes down or stays steady when a Democrat is in charge. The data is at http://www.lafn.org/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html.
Warning – if the explanation involves Clinton getting delayed benefits from 12 years of Reagan/Bush trickle down theory, then shouldn’t Reagan have benefited from the Nixon/Ford years?
I suggest people check their data before responding…
Clinton lowered the debt quite a bit.
Obama spent $700 billion, not trillion, which is still quite a bit under the $1000 billion (or one trillion) debt that Bush gave us.
Great answers everyone!
I have to agree on Clinton, Congress probably kept him from blowing the budget like the other presidents.
Don’t know why Fox News is going on about a trillion dollar deficit under Obama. According to the graph (see link), that’s inherited from Bush.
Thanks again.
Well, for example, Clinton’s administration put us at a budge surplus because he couldn’t get a lot of his planned changes through Congress; so the money set aside for that was never spent, resulting in a budget surplus. Reagan, Bush, and Bush Jr. got a lot more legislative work done that actually required financial backing. I think most of their ideas were crap, but the majority at the time disagreed, so their legislation went through.
Also, I sincerely doubt that Obama is going to have a budget surplus. I support what he’s doing, but he’d have to pull a miracle out of his cap with all the money he’s put toward the bailout, to still have a budget surplus at the end of his 4 years.
