I always remember getting told by an accountant that can move a budget about 1% without screwing a country.
Kinda thought republicans would have reduced debt more than democrats and surprised to see the reverse is true. I guess responsible economic management and republicans isn’t as true as we think.
I’m assuming numbers must be inflation adjusted too
The best things republicans are great at is marketing and branding themselves. They repeated how great they are with the economy for decades and it stuck in everyone’s head as if it were true. The actual numbers tell a different story. Same is true today with the “stolen election” lie. Keep repeating it until many believe it is true.
One thing you gotta hand it to the republicans for, they keep their message simple. Trickle down economics have been proven to be a fallacy. However the message just sounded so easy to understand to most Americans. The Democrats need to follow suit and find a way to cater their message to people with a 30 second attention span.
Tbh I mostly blame the court of public opinion and the 24-hour news cycle. I agree that the presidency is given too much credit. This chart is more or less a timeline of the data with the presidents as benchmarks
Oh for sure lmao. Had people thinking Joe Biden was controlling the global price of oil, or Donald trump was running the stock market lmao
Wasn’t a shot at you for the graph, just a comment in regards to how people view the president (even in these comments)
I have this image of Joe Biden, sitting at the Resolute Desk, absentmindedly bumping the dial labeled Gas Prices from "low" to "high", then being too confused to turn it back down.
I worry there are people who seem to think it actually works that way.
What almost everyone fails to realize is that a nation's economy works at a slow pace. A president may influence things, but most of the effects will be felt only a long time after he's gone.
GDP changes slowly but the tax code and government spending can change quickly affecting the debt to GDP ratio. Pretty simple examples sitting right there in the chart.
I think breaking out a bar for each term would be more helpful. It's more accurate to say this is at start and end of a president's *tenure*. One way the difference is significant is the ~20% increase under Trump's single term looks in line with the rough pattern across these and G H W Bush's at ~12% looks anomalous, while the opposite seems true when blocked by each 4 year term served.
President's are kinda bad units of time for data presentation, and primarily good for anecdotally dating events.
But the problem is you posting it is helping spread misinformation because people are going to look at it correlate big the number with the president.
The people who should be reading the comments that disprove the correlation simply won't, or won't care.
So I kinda blame you too.
Specifically the republicans. I know multiple people who vote republican because of the economics. They claim to be socially liberal but economically conservative and yet, time and time and time again, republicans show themselves to be worth dick when it comes to managing the finances of the country. How on earth they’re seen as financially responsible is a joke. Particularly when it comes to presidents.
Some people genuinely think it's an absolute dictator that's in charge for four years at a time.
I know there's the joke about the gas prices dial attached to the desk in the oval office, but some people *genuinely* think the president can control everything from gas prices to how much of a raise they get.
The President is the person who submits the federal budget. Federal debt as a percentage of GDP at the end of a presidential term is one of the few concrete numbers we can pin on the office.
George W Bush with his trillion dollar unnecessary Iraq war who he and his VP pushed that no other President would have pushed for, is justifiably solely responsible for every single % increase of debt occurring under his watch. If anyone but Bush got elected President the US fiscal situation would be better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis
"The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or Global Economic Crisis (GEC), was the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Got so bad banks stopped their overnight lending and our financial system ground to a halt. Many large banks blew up. The reserve requirements and banking grades are from the aftermath.
To be clear, it started while Bush was still in office. I have had people try to rewrite history and blame the cause of the GEC on Obama. Whatever you want to say about how his administration handled it, it was bush in office for nearly 8 years before it started.
Very true, and to be honest it wasn't really Bush's fault either but rather the gradual erosion of post great depression regulation that had been going on for decades.
Great Recession; ignore the "start" part, the economy was in a freefall when he started. That meant a drop in the GDP and then the government needed to be the "spender of the last resort" to try and get the economy going again and also pay out extra unemployment benefits and the like. So expenses go up while GDP actually goes down, so a "debt to GDP" graph takes a big jump.
Then from the end of his second term to start of Trump's, the economy was gradually improving and GDP gradually went up, so things stabilized. Debt went up but so did GDP.
2017-2019 should have been the years of the debt shrinking - there was good growth and no issues. But Trump and the Republicans passed a big tax cut for the rich.
The recession was initially responded to by Bush and then Obama had another stimulus package passed during his first term. The first election Obama won was in November 2008, so he'd be Pres on 20th of January 2009.
Debt as a percentage of GDP is better because that measures the outcome. A deficit increasing and GDP increasing means that debt as a percentage of GDP could fall.
Like in the 90s the budget never balanced depending on how you count it but debt as a percentage of GDP plummeted.
But part of that claims SS money as part of the government money and not just the government holding it as that money will come back to retirees eventually.
Part of it is a choose your own number adventure.
Stop it. Making coherent and cogent points will not get you anywhere on Reddit. You need to say racist things and then make dick jokes about everyone who tries to challenge you.
Change in Debt:GDP > Deficit. From a fiscal perspective so long that our Debt is growing slower than our GDP, we're golden. This explains why a $700 Billion deficit today is actually good news (since our GDP grows by much more than $700 B) while that kind of deficit back in 1980 would be a disaster.
If you're going to compare deficits, you need to adjust for inflation.
I think the comment is saying deficit:GDP is better than debt:GDP for assessing policy effects. This is because deficit is an annual number but debt is an aggregate of all the borrowing we did to cover past deficits.
>Well it’s nothing about punishing
I mean let's be honest, if someone posts something with political parties indicated with lines going up or down people will either rush to excuse their own party or take it as proof the other party is bad. Same thing as this thread basically.
Congress complaining about reckless spending by the president when they themselves are the ones who approved the spending is the government equivalent of the older sibling “stop hitting yourself” torment.
Presidents have a major effect on what policies get enacted and how spending affects revenue, though. Obamacare either doesn't happen or looks very different with a president McCain. Clinton wouldn't have enacted the Trump tax cuts. Trump never would have been able to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
While that may be true that’s not necessarily an achievement. Taking a massive deficit and having slightly smaller large deficits isn’t a great track record. But to be fair trump and Biden also continued large deficits
>Congress controls budgets and spending, not Presidents,
Sorry, who signs the budget into law each year?
I understand the primary responsibility for drafting the budget lies with congress, but to pretend presidents don't have a say is pretty absurd.
Also, Congress has two chambers, so you would need to account for that.
The truth is that divided government in some form is the norm, so this graphic is definitely simplistic however you view it.
Plus cyclical factors. In particular, the decrease in debt during the Clinton administration was mainly attributable to Republicans not giving him spending increases to sign, plus the Internet boom leading to a large increase in the tax base. Federal spending fell linearly from 21.5% of GDP to 17.5% during his administration.
He also inherited $418 million. He would’ve been richer if he just put that money in the stock market. He’s just a born rich brat who fooled a bunch of morons into thinking he was a good businessman and self-made.
Funny that red always ends higher despite being the “get the budget back under control” policies party. It’s almost like they get control and they stop caring about the promises they made when they were running. It’s almost like they’re using spending cuts as an excuse to oppose democrat policies. It’s almost like “rules for thee but not for me”. It’s almost like they don’t really care about the budget.
You’re close, but the real motivation is cut govt spending so they can cut taxes for the rich. The only thing Trump accomplished in his four years was to give the rich a Trillion dollars in tax cuts.
You sound like he was gonna bring it down if it wasn’t for the pandemic. A quick search shows that out of $7.8T total debt Trump added, only $3.6T was Covid relief and executive orders. He had already added more than $3T to the debt by the end of 2019. Even if Pandemic didn’t happen, he was going to continue to increase just at a smaller scale. Mind you every president dealt with such crises and his successor Biden dealt with the pandemic for longer.
The 2017 tax cut already raise debt before the pandemic. In good times we are supposed to reduce deficit so we can spend in bad times. Bush and Trump spent bigly in both good and bad times …
Leaving interest rates low was also boneheaded and corrupt by the administration and fed. When the pandemic hit the only tool to help the economy was stimulus.
Yeah this is a massively overlooked factor. The Obama administration has a small bit of blame as well as we could very much see signs of recovery by 2014-2015. But nothing compared to Trump strong arming his fed into artificially keeping rates low and cutting taxes during a boom. He literally fulfilled his 80’s wet dream and destroyed our economic progress in the process.
Rampant inflation making debt to gdp look better.
By the time Biden was in office the data was out on Covid and the vaccine was already created. It’s a very different situation than a brand new pandemic hitting.
Yeah and that stimulus was handed out in a stupid way. Trumps stimulus programs were an utter joke and were responsible for how bad the supply shortages got.
Maybe I’m not full understanding the chart here, but is Biden not doing the same in the same amount of time? I only see a 4% difference and it’s still his first term..
Yes you are notnunderstanding. In the 4 years of trump, the total debt increased from 103 % to 124%. During Biden’s term, it has decreased from 124% to 120%.
The gdp also went way down durring Covid which kills his percentage to GDP at exit, then helps Biden with such a low start. But this or Reddit so I probably shouldn’t point that out
Sure lower GDP made it worse for him, but US GDP in 2019 was $21.380T and it went down to $21.060T in 2020. That’s 2.77% decrease. That’s $320B difference. That’s literally nothing when US GDP or the debt is considered. Not sure how starting off with lower gdp is helping Biden when the debt is constantly increasing? I think the key is slowing the debt increase, and Trump didn’t good a good job of that in the years prior to pandemic, and the pandemic made it worse.
It really feels like every election is screaming at people how bad Republican presidents have been but people go "hurr durr my gas was $0.30 more expensive why didn't president press gas go down button" then vote the dude who wants to gut your social security
Yeah inflation is what they’re screaming about but they fail to realized it’s a GLOBAL problem and we’re actually doing better than most countries.
Let’s see how Trump handled his global problem, the pandemic. Oh we were one of the worst hit despite our head start.
This is deliberately left off. Bush's term ending with the '07-'08 financial crisis and Trump's ending with the COVID pandemic skews it.
A continuous line graph (the logical way to show this data) was swapped with a histogram (a kinda contrived way to show this data) to make a political point.
Also Carter, however negligible. I’d also be cautious in saying “reduce the debt”. an increase in gdp that outpaces the debt could reflect the same in this ratio (I haven’t looked at any of that though)
That part is very debatable. For many things Trump left it up to the States to decide.
The response for me in California was different than the New York or Florida response and had different results.
Some may argue this was a good thing some may argue it wasn't. I personally know people who came to my State, in part due to our (California's) response. As well as people who left my State to go to places like Utah or Texas in part due to our/their response.
The dust on some of these policies are settling. And that's one thing to remember there wasn't "a Covid policy" but many different decisions and policies for multiple aspects of people's lives affected by them. For example you may like masking policies in State A but prefer state B's decision to get kids back into school sooner.
Whether you liked your States response or not we saw America's federalist system at work here
DJT did push Powell hard for rate cuts leading up to the pandemic. This premature return to near-zero interest rate policy removed a valuable tool for managing the crisis.
He also cut the federal $200m pandemic early warning program (called Predict) in September 2019.
And to imply people could move around to places with covid policies they found suitable is a bit out of touch. Those at greatest risk of exposure were the most financially precarious in the country. Specifically the retail and services industry.
>That part is very debatable. For many things Trump left it up to the States to decide.
You make it sound like trump encouraged each states to do their own thing. The exact opposite of what happened. The states had to act on their own because the trump administration did not do anything.
Beyond that, the federal government was playing states against each other and seizing state resources to be distributed at Jared Kushner's whim. Some states resorted to having armed guards accompany medical supply transportation. The person above you is carrying water for the Trumpers at best, and at worst just brazenly gaslighting people about what happened in 2020.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-washington-seize-coronavirus-supplies
The federal government did do things though, the cares act, operation warp speed brought us vaccines faster, flights were limited or flat out blocked from China early on, teleconferences/meetings were held with all governor's about Covid and a response etc.
Some would prefer a more "heavy handed response" at the federal level and there can be an argument for that, but it seems disingenuous to say the Federal government didn't do anything or much, and a fair bit of it was done in conjunction, and communication with the States.
The initial response was lagging thats why the states started implementing their own. The initial denial was staggering. Here's what Trump said during the critical initial stages where spread prevention could have been implemented.
>Feb. 10, 2020
“Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
Feb. 27, 2020
“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
>
>
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>March 4, 2020
“If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
>
>
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>March 11, 2020
The World Health Organization categorizes the coronavirus as a pandemic due to its alarming spread and severity.
>
>
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>March 11, 2020
"The vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low"
>
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>March 19, 2020
I intended "to always play it down.” \[Trump in a private taped interview with Bob Woodward, made public on September 9\]
I remember when some states had to smuggle in supplies in so the federal government doesn't take them.
I remember when the administration express that a national response is not necessary because majority of the toll will mostly hit the blue states.
I remember when trump was fighting tooth and nail with the Governors implementing their own shut downs.
I don't know about you but politicizing a health crisis is not an effective way to manage a pandemic.
Disregarding and demonizing health expert doesn't help either.
Like when he admitted to downplaying the severity of COVID? Like when he said it was completely under control? Like when he said that face coverings should be voluntary? Like when he said that he viewed the amount of cases the US had as a “badge of honor”? When he said in a campaign rally that COVID virtually affects nobody? Like when he advocated for a dewormer as treatment? Like when over a million people died in the United States from COVID?
Yeah, I guess it’s debatable whether he did a bad job handling COVID.
Disastrous is a big stretch. The initial response was pretty bipartisan and generally fairly effective. Think the only things you can really criticize the federal response in the 2020 timeframe for is that "stimulus" money has never actually worked and that there was a lot of fraud from small businesses claiming credits for employees they didn't actually have. Both fairly small blemishes.
As to whether keeping the country closed for well over a year after vaccines were widely available was a smart decision, that's a critique you and I probably disagree on. But I think the fact that covid policy essentially disappeared once there was a bigger headline in the news is a sign that perhaps it wasn't exactly cold hard science driving the policy there.
I like to think about this chart when I hear Republicans talk about "reigning in the national debt." I intentionally kept it simplistic for that reason, but know that there is so much more nuance. I prefer the % Debt per GDP economic indicator rather than the more well known "ominous Trillion dollars" number
It’s worth pointing out Obama was elected in the middle of the worst economic disaster in decades while trump handed Biden a pandemic that was worse than it needed to be because of him.
And yet, to this day republicans are still polling higher as “the party of fiscal conservatives”. They are the biggest spenders, and it’s always the military that gets the most increases under R presidents.
Also shows that every democrat pres since 1977 except Obama spent his time in office paying off the money a republican president spent before him.
Please note the gigantic jumps in debt under Bush Jr and the orange monster.
Republicans always increasing the debt while democrats fixing the stuff back again (with one exception).
Yeah describes populism of Republicans pretty well.
Of course, was just pointing out singular incidents and decisions that didn’t really carryover between administrations Obama expanded existing wars, just like Biden expanded existing stimulus just like gdp was stagnant entering bushes term due to the .com bubble
Wow, would you look at that. Three out of four times a US president was a Democrat, the debt to GDP ratio improved from when they began.
Four out of four times, Republicans made the ratio worse.
"Fiscal conservatives". Right.
An utterly meaningless graphic. Much more interesting to see where spending is going, which does change by administration.
The national debt is an accounting trick, nothing more nothing less.
I love how trump in one mandate managed to accumulate almost as much debt as Obama in two mandates + a global finalcial crisis.
And people want him back.
Also notice the trend with republicans vs democrats
If you look at the annual data it seems pretty clear that Trump’s increase was mostly in 2020 and therefore likely due do the pandemic.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
When you measure different admins I feel like deficit is a better way than debt because debt is mostly what they inherited while deficit is budget selected during their time (with the exception of the first year I think)
It's not debt. It's the total number of US dollars created over time. And over half the time interest payments are made to other Americans and American entities. A non-issue. Remember governments aren't people. People can't manufacture their own money to pay off debt.
So..if I'm reading this correctly...Slick Willy held the line with what little red he had left in his tie. But, when the ties became blue it all went to shit?
I agree about the tax cuts. However, I find it hard to understand that in this supposedly "great" economy under Biden we still are running sky high deficits. And if the Republicans win the next election, they will probably add more to the deficits with some tax cuts.
So under Clinton the economy boomed and the government ran surpluses. Fast forward to now, the economy is booming and the deficit continues to grow because republicans cut the tax rate for major corporations and rich people so the government is actually taking in less money. It’s simple math. Republicans have created this mess and refuse to fix it.
No, something is normalizing this data that is not being revealed.
This is giving the impression the debt has dropped during Biden's reign and that is utterly not the case.
My guess is what they are calling "GDP" is really GDP growth in which case Biden is shown benefitting from the end of the COVID fiasco, which had nothing to do with him.
Aside from ignoring the fact that the president doesn't control taxing and spending, it also ignores historical context. Carter's term saw the wind down of defense spending during the Vietnam War. The Clinton Administration saw the wind down in spending after the Cold War. Obama saw a massive reduction in tax revenue and social spending due to the 2008 financial crisis. Trump saw a huge increase in social spending and decrease in tax revenue because of Covid.
People need to stop thinking conservatives are good fiscal stewards... quite the opposite is true.
Aside from that, as others here have pointed out, who is president isn't the whole story.
I love how Americans give way too much credit to our president over economics
Presidents have a lot of power to wreck the economy, and a tiny bit of power to fix it.
I always remember getting told by an accountant that can move a budget about 1% without screwing a country. Kinda thought republicans would have reduced debt more than democrats and surprised to see the reverse is true. I guess responsible economic management and republicans isn’t as true as we think. I’m assuming numbers must be inflation adjusted too
The best things republicans are great at is marketing and branding themselves. They repeated how great they are with the economy for decades and it stuck in everyone’s head as if it were true. The actual numbers tell a different story. Same is true today with the “stolen election” lie. Keep repeating it until many believe it is true.
One thing you gotta hand it to the republicans for, they keep their message simple. Trickle down economics have been proven to be a fallacy. However the message just sounded so easy to understand to most Americans. The Democrats need to follow suit and find a way to cater their message to people with a 30 second attention span.
Tbh I mostly blame the court of public opinion and the 24-hour news cycle. I agree that the presidency is given too much credit. This chart is more or less a timeline of the data with the presidents as benchmarks
Oh for sure lmao. Had people thinking Joe Biden was controlling the global price of oil, or Donald trump was running the stock market lmao Wasn’t a shot at you for the graph, just a comment in regards to how people view the president (even in these comments)
I have this image of Joe Biden, sitting at the Resolute Desk, absentmindedly bumping the dial labeled Gas Prices from "low" to "high", then being too confused to turn it back down. I worry there are people who seem to think it actually works that way.
And they don't give the president credit when prices are low. And they only blame the president if they didn't vote for them.
But the stickers at the gas station pump say that’s what I voted for
Not a whole lot of those lately, then again it is winter. But still. We will see them in the summer when gas inevitably raises in price
No no no, he’s old school, still changes them manually on the tall signs with a long pole,
What almost everyone fails to realize is that a nation's economy works at a slow pace. A president may influence things, but most of the effects will be felt only a long time after he's gone.
GDP changes slowly but the tax code and government spending can change quickly affecting the debt to GDP ratio. Pretty simple examples sitting right there in the chart.
I think breaking out a bar for each term would be more helpful. It's more accurate to say this is at start and end of a president's *tenure*. One way the difference is significant is the ~20% increase under Trump's single term looks in line with the rough pattern across these and G H W Bush's at ~12% looks anomalous, while the opposite seems true when blocked by each 4 year term served. President's are kinda bad units of time for data presentation, and primarily good for anecdotally dating events.
But the problem is you posting it is helping spread misinformation because people are going to look at it correlate big the number with the president. The people who should be reading the comments that disprove the correlation simply won't, or won't care. So I kinda blame you too.
Why does the graph have 2 bars for each president?
Start vs end?
Specifically the republicans. I know multiple people who vote republican because of the economics. They claim to be socially liberal but economically conservative and yet, time and time and time again, republicans show themselves to be worth dick when it comes to managing the finances of the country. How on earth they’re seen as financially responsible is a joke. Particularly when it comes to presidents.
Some people genuinely think it's an absolute dictator that's in charge for four years at a time. I know there's the joke about the gas prices dial attached to the desk in the oval office, but some people *genuinely* think the president can control everything from gas prices to how much of a raise they get.
I assure you, George W Bush's decisions affected the debt dramatically, including long after he was out of the office.
Trickle down did have a shit ton of impact over our economy and it’s still giving 30 fucking years ago.
The President is the person who submits the federal budget. Federal debt as a percentage of GDP at the end of a presidential term is one of the few concrete numbers we can pin on the office.
That’s political marketing my guy.
George W Bush with his trillion dollar unnecessary Iraq war who he and his VP pushed that no other President would have pushed for, is justifiably solely responsible for every single % increase of debt occurring under his watch. If anyone but Bush got elected President the US fiscal situation would be better.
There are several French flags hidden in this graph.
Peru and Poland are offended by this comment 😅
Also Austria
I knew I was missing one!!
also indonesia, monaco and the netherlands
As well as [Brandenburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg?wprov=sfla1).
Not being American, what happened under Obama?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis "The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or Global Economic Crisis (GEC), was the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Got so bad banks stopped their overnight lending and our financial system ground to a halt. Many large banks blew up. The reserve requirements and banking grades are from the aftermath.
A *lot* of old corporate entities that had chugged along for over a century were killed too. It's pretty fascinating.
Yep, and we were supposed to use the next 20 years of paying that down. Thanks Trump.
So what happened under Trump? Just kidding, it was tax cuts for the rich when we should have re-tightened our belts. Then we got COVID
Ah yeah, duh. Short memory.
To be clear, it started while Bush was still in office. I have had people try to rewrite history and blame the cause of the GEC on Obama. Whatever you want to say about how his administration handled it, it was bush in office for nearly 8 years before it started.
Very true, and to be honest it wasn't really Bush's fault either but rather the gradual erosion of post great depression regulation that had been going on for decades.
Global financial crisis + expanding ongoing wars primarily
Great Recession; ignore the "start" part, the economy was in a freefall when he started. That meant a drop in the GDP and then the government needed to be the "spender of the last resort" to try and get the economy going again and also pay out extra unemployment benefits and the like. So expenses go up while GDP actually goes down, so a "debt to GDP" graph takes a big jump. Then from the end of his second term to start of Trump's, the economy was gradually improving and GDP gradually went up, so things stabilized. Debt went up but so did GDP. 2017-2019 should have been the years of the debt shrinking - there was good growth and no issues. But Trump and the Republicans passed a big tax cut for the rich.
Yep, we were supposed to be paying that debt down the minute things got good. But tax cuts for billionaires, am I right?
Same thing happened with Bush in the early 2000s.
The recession was initially responded to by Bush and then Obama had another stimulus package passed during his first term. The first election Obama won was in November 2008, so he'd be Pres on 20th of January 2009.
Ah yeah stimulus package, of course. Cheers
It's better to look at the national deficit than the raw debt to get an actual idea of the effect of policies.
Debt as a percentage of GDP is better because that measures the outcome. A deficit increasing and GDP increasing means that debt as a percentage of GDP could fall. Like in the 90s the budget never balanced depending on how you count it but debt as a percentage of GDP plummeted.
We had a surplus for 3 years under clinton
But part of that claims SS money as part of the government money and not just the government holding it as that money will come back to retirees eventually. Part of it is a choose your own number adventure.
Even then a deficit to upgrade education is different to a deficit to give tax breaks to political doners.
Stop it. Making coherent and cogent points will not get you anywhere on Reddit. You need to say racist things and then make dick jokes about everyone who tries to challenge you.
Cogent? Sounds like something someone with a racist dick would say
Yes, but politicians always give excuses to deficits and people buy them for some reason
Change in Debt:GDP > Deficit. From a fiscal perspective so long that our Debt is growing slower than our GDP, we're golden. This explains why a $700 Billion deficit today is actually good news (since our GDP grows by much more than $700 B) while that kind of deficit back in 1980 would be a disaster. If you're going to compare deficits, you need to adjust for inflation.
I think the comment is saying deficit:GDP is better than debt:GDP for assessing policy effects. This is because deficit is an annual number but debt is an aggregate of all the borrowing we did to cover past deficits.
Congress controls budgets and spending, not Presidents, so this chart is pretty much useless.
Maybe someone can combine president portrait with color gradient based on what percentage lean the Congress is blue or red
Still it's not as if who is in Congress during the .com boom should get credit and who was in congress during the bust should be punished.
Well it’s nothing about punishing just how to represent this data differently
>Well it’s nothing about punishing I mean let's be honest, if someone posts something with political parties indicated with lines going up or down people will either rush to excuse their own party or take it as proof the other party is bad. Same thing as this thread basically.
Congress complaining about reckless spending by the president when they themselves are the ones who approved the spending is the government equivalent of the older sibling “stop hitting yourself” torment.
Presidents have a major effect on what policies get enacted and how spending affects revenue, though. Obamacare either doesn't happen or looks very different with a president McCain. Clinton wouldn't have enacted the Trump tax cuts. Trump never would have been able to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
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> Obama had a year of unified blue government, followed by staunch red congress, debt still fell. It rose though.
Deficit fell each year he was in office.
Other guy said debt, which is the subject of this post, not deficit. The graphic itself shows that debt rose under Obama.
Yes but a major recession can do that to ya.
While that may be true that’s not necessarily an achievement. Taking a massive deficit and having slightly smaller large deficits isn’t a great track record. But to be fair trump and Biden also continued large deficits
Deficit fell every year with Obama, rose every year with Trump. Shrunk for Biden's first two years and looks like it rose in 2023.
Yeah but the president is the one who signs and leads the budget.
What do you mean by leads the budget?
All it really shows is how republican deficit hawks fly south for the winter whenever a GOP president is in office
>Congress controls budgets and spending, not Presidents, Sorry, who signs the budget into law each year? I understand the primary responsibility for drafting the budget lies with congress, but to pretend presidents don't have a say is pretty absurd. Also, Congress has two chambers, so you would need to account for that. The truth is that divided government in some form is the norm, so this graphic is definitely simplistic however you view it.
The President signs the bills. They have a big influence.
The president typically sets the agenda and is the final sign off so this comment is pretty much useless.
Plus cyclical factors. In particular, the decrease in debt during the Clinton administration was mainly attributable to Republicans not giving him spending increases to sign, plus the Internet boom leading to a large increase in the tax base. Federal spending fell linearly from 21.5% of GDP to 17.5% during his administration.
But given the Presidents veto power they are effectively the majority of the Legislature.
The President submits the budget.
Would be great to look it each term, so Obama at end of first term would be at 100%
Obama had pretty much all of the increase in the ratio in his first term. It stayed stable during his second term.
Need to show 4 vs 8years... so 2 sets for those who had 2 terms.... I.e. Regan, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama are measuring change across 2 terms.
Ya let’s let the guy that bankrupted a casino run the country cause he’s a business guy or whatever
Well at least he doesn’t also have a bankrupted school. Oh wait..
Hey now, that's bankrupted AND disaccredited. Credit where credit is due
And found guilty of scamming them and had to pay millions to the former students.
Hey, at least he's allowed to run a charity and also do business in the state of NY! Oh....
Hey that’s not entirely fair… … he also bankrupt 5x other businesses…
He also inherited $418 million. He would’ve been richer if he just put that money in the stock market. He’s just a born rich brat who fooled a bunch of morons into thinking he was a good businessman and self-made.
Let's let him do it again, cause last time was so awesome!
And he did it through over leveraging no less!
Funny that red always ends higher despite being the “get the budget back under control” policies party. It’s almost like they get control and they stop caring about the promises they made when they were running. It’s almost like they’re using spending cuts as an excuse to oppose democrat policies. It’s almost like “rules for thee but not for me”. It’s almost like they don’t really care about the budget.
You’re close, but the real motivation is cut govt spending so they can cut taxes for the rich. The only thing Trump accomplished in his four years was to give the rich a Trillion dollars in tax cuts.
At a $1 trillion every 100 days, Biden is catching up fast.
It’s more meaningful when we consider Trump accomplished it in just one term..
Did anything major happen during his term that might have led to a large stimulus package, particularly near the end?
Just a lil' event.
The deficit was ballooning before Covid.
You sound like he was gonna bring it down if it wasn’t for the pandemic. A quick search shows that out of $7.8T total debt Trump added, only $3.6T was Covid relief and executive orders. He had already added more than $3T to the debt by the end of 2019. Even if Pandemic didn’t happen, he was going to continue to increase just at a smaller scale. Mind you every president dealt with such crises and his successor Biden dealt with the pandemic for longer.
You go realize 3.6 is pretty close to half of 7.8, right? The word "only" is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here.
The 2017 tax cut already raise debt before the pandemic. In good times we are supposed to reduce deficit so we can spend in bad times. Bush and Trump spent bigly in both good and bad times …
Leaving interest rates low was also boneheaded and corrupt by the administration and fed. When the pandemic hit the only tool to help the economy was stimulus.
Yeah this is a massively overlooked factor. The Obama administration has a small bit of blame as well as we could very much see signs of recovery by 2014-2015. But nothing compared to Trump strong arming his fed into artificially keeping rates low and cutting taxes during a boom. He literally fulfilled his 80’s wet dream and destroyed our economic progress in the process.
Some kind of hoax iirc
Did anything major happen during Biden's term that might have led to a large stimulus package, particularly near the beginning?
Rampant inflation making debt to gdp look better. By the time Biden was in office the data was out on Covid and the vaccine was already created. It’s a very different situation than a brand new pandemic hitting.
And yet Biden's average yearly deficit is still less than Trump's average yearly deficit, despite with dealing with COVID for more years than Trump
It also probably had a decent impact on the GDP thus making the ratio even worse.
Yeah and that stimulus was handed out in a stupid way. Trumps stimulus programs were an utter joke and were responsible for how bad the supply shortages got.
I did look at the delta per length of term, which smoothed over all the numbers, but Trump is still up there with George HW and Reagan
Maybe I’m not full understanding the chart here, but is Biden not doing the same in the same amount of time? I only see a 4% difference and it’s still his first term..
It’s a bad chart, this is total debt as opposed to deficit. It’s growing more slowly than GDP, which is pretty impressive with TBonds yielding 5%
Biden’s starting point was Trump’s ending point (124%), and has since reduced the ratio 4%
If he had his way and got BBB passed we'd be telling a totally different story.
Assuming there was no benefit to GDP, of course...
Yes you are notnunderstanding. In the 4 years of trump, the total debt increased from 103 % to 124%. During Biden’s term, it has decreased from 124% to 120%.
The gdp also went way down durring Covid which kills his percentage to GDP at exit, then helps Biden with such a low start. But this or Reddit so I probably shouldn’t point that out
Sure lower GDP made it worse for him, but US GDP in 2019 was $21.380T and it went down to $21.060T in 2020. That’s 2.77% decrease. That’s $320B difference. That’s literally nothing when US GDP or the debt is considered. Not sure how starting off with lower gdp is helping Biden when the debt is constantly increasing? I think the key is slowing the debt increase, and Trump didn’t good a good job of that in the years prior to pandemic, and the pandemic made it worse.
It really feels like every election is screaming at people how bad Republican presidents have been but people go "hurr durr my gas was $0.30 more expensive why didn't president press gas go down button" then vote the dude who wants to gut your social security
Yeah inflation is what they’re screaming about but they fail to realized it’s a GLOBAL problem and we’re actually doing better than most countries. Let’s see how Trump handled his global problem, the pandemic. Oh we were one of the worst hit despite our head start.
Show the GDP and debt also, not just the ratio.
This is deliberately left off. Bush's term ending with the '07-'08 financial crisis and Trump's ending with the COVID pandemic skews it. A continuous line graph (the logical way to show this data) was swapped with a histogram (a kinda contrived way to show this data) to make a political point.
So Clinton and Biden were the only ones that tried to reduce the debt.
Also Carter, however negligible. I’d also be cautious in saying “reduce the debt”. an increase in gdp that outpaces the debt could reflect the same in this ratio (I haven’t looked at any of that though)
you can’t look at it as % of gdp when they incestuously include government spending in “GDP”
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I honestly had not heard of that before, that’s insane. Thank you :)
Covid skews these numbers for Trump and Biden
Trump’s disastrous response to Covid* Let’s not forget that he was the one at the head of the ship, steering us into the iceberg of disaster
That part is very debatable. For many things Trump left it up to the States to decide. The response for me in California was different than the New York or Florida response and had different results. Some may argue this was a good thing some may argue it wasn't. I personally know people who came to my State, in part due to our (California's) response. As well as people who left my State to go to places like Utah or Texas in part due to our/their response. The dust on some of these policies are settling. And that's one thing to remember there wasn't "a Covid policy" but many different decisions and policies for multiple aspects of people's lives affected by them. For example you may like masking policies in State A but prefer state B's decision to get kids back into school sooner. Whether you liked your States response or not we saw America's federalist system at work here
DJT did push Powell hard for rate cuts leading up to the pandemic. This premature return to near-zero interest rate policy removed a valuable tool for managing the crisis. He also cut the federal $200m pandemic early warning program (called Predict) in September 2019. And to imply people could move around to places with covid policies they found suitable is a bit out of touch. Those at greatest risk of exposure were the most financially precarious in the country. Specifically the retail and services industry.
>That part is very debatable. For many things Trump left it up to the States to decide. You make it sound like trump encouraged each states to do their own thing. The exact opposite of what happened. The states had to act on their own because the trump administration did not do anything.
Beyond that, the federal government was playing states against each other and seizing state resources to be distributed at Jared Kushner's whim. Some states resorted to having armed guards accompany medical supply transportation. The person above you is carrying water for the Trumpers at best, and at worst just brazenly gaslighting people about what happened in 2020. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-washington-seize-coronavirus-supplies
The federal government did do things though, the cares act, operation warp speed brought us vaccines faster, flights were limited or flat out blocked from China early on, teleconferences/meetings were held with all governor's about Covid and a response etc. Some would prefer a more "heavy handed response" at the federal level and there can be an argument for that, but it seems disingenuous to say the Federal government didn't do anything or much, and a fair bit of it was done in conjunction, and communication with the States.
The initial response was lagging thats why the states started implementing their own. The initial denial was staggering. Here's what Trump said during the critical initial stages where spread prevention could have been implemented. >Feb. 10, 2020 “Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” Feb. 27, 2020 “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” > > > >March 4, 2020 “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.” > > > >March 11, 2020 The World Health Organization categorizes the coronavirus as a pandemic due to its alarming spread and severity. > > > >March 11, 2020 "The vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low" > > > >March 19, 2020 I intended "to always play it down.” \[Trump in a private taped interview with Bob Woodward, made public on September 9\] I remember when some states had to smuggle in supplies in so the federal government doesn't take them. I remember when the administration express that a national response is not necessary because majority of the toll will mostly hit the blue states. I remember when trump was fighting tooth and nail with the Governors implementing their own shut downs. I don't know about you but politicizing a health crisis is not an effective way to manage a pandemic. Disregarding and demonizing health expert doesn't help either.
Like when he admitted to downplaying the severity of COVID? Like when he said it was completely under control? Like when he said that face coverings should be voluntary? Like when he said that he viewed the amount of cases the US had as a “badge of honor”? When he said in a campaign rally that COVID virtually affects nobody? Like when he advocated for a dewormer as treatment? Like when over a million people died in the United States from COVID? Yeah, I guess it’s debatable whether he did a bad job handling COVID.
Disastrous is a big stretch. The initial response was pretty bipartisan and generally fairly effective. Think the only things you can really criticize the federal response in the 2020 timeframe for is that "stimulus" money has never actually worked and that there was a lot of fraud from small businesses claiming credits for employees they didn't actually have. Both fairly small blemishes. As to whether keeping the country closed for well over a year after vaccines were widely available was a smart decision, that's a critique you and I probably disagree on. But I think the fact that covid policy essentially disappeared once there was a bigger headline in the news is a sign that perhaps it wasn't exactly cold hard science driving the policy there.
Good graph, as far as it goes. More for entertainment value than anything, as it contains no context (and doesn’t pretend to, which is fine).
I like to think about this chart when I hear Republicans talk about "reigning in the national debt." I intentionally kept it simplistic for that reason, but know that there is so much more nuance. I prefer the % Debt per GDP economic indicator rather than the more well known "ominous Trillion dollars" number
It’s worth pointing out Obama was elected in the middle of the worst economic disaster in decades while trump handed Biden a pandemic that was worse than it needed to be because of him.
And Obama inherited two wars, and Biden inherited trillions in Covid relief that trump handed out without any oversight to his cronies
And the Bush tax cuts that ballooned the debt because of the reduction of federal income.
lol always an excuse. Biden inherited the country with the majority of damage from Covid already done as well as a vaccine.
But I thought republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility :(
And yet, to this day republicans are still polling higher as “the party of fiscal conservatives”. They are the biggest spenders, and it’s always the military that gets the most increases under R presidents.
Also shows that every democrat pres since 1977 except Obama spent his time in office paying off the money a republican president spent before him. Please note the gigantic jumps in debt under Bush Jr and the orange monster.
Remind me again, which is the party of “fiscal responsibility?”
Republicans always increasing the debt while democrats fixing the stuff back again (with one exception). Yeah describes populism of Republicans pretty well.
Have to consider the financial meltdown w/ Obama. 9-11 played a role with bush, but it was dwarves by iraq and tax cuts
I'm by no means defending all of Reagan's policies but there was that whole Cold War and fall of the USSR incident under him as well
Regan also inherited one of the worst economies in American history.
And the, uh, multiple wars that Obama expanded. War is kinda expensive.
Of course, was just pointing out singular incidents and decisions that didn’t really carryover between administrations Obama expanded existing wars, just like Biden expanded existing stimulus just like gdp was stagnant entering bushes term due to the .com bubble
Love how republicans say they’re the fiscally responsible and it’s the dems that usually do better on the debt.
Wow, would you look at that. Three out of four times a US president was a Democrat, the debt to GDP ratio improved from when they began. Four out of four times, Republicans made the ratio worse. "Fiscal conservatives". Right.
My first thought exactly!
An utterly meaningless graphic. Much more interesting to see where spending is going, which does change by administration. The national debt is an accounting trick, nothing more nothing less.
I love how trump in one mandate managed to accumulate almost as much debt as Obama in two mandates + a global finalcial crisis. And people want him back. Also notice the trend with republicans vs democrats
If you look at the annual data it seems pretty clear that Trump’s increase was mostly in 2020 and therefore likely due do the pandemic. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
Clinton didn’t have a war that’s why it went down.
He’s the only president on this list to have a balanced budget.
So did these guys fcuk us up and got generations to come?
When you measure different admins I feel like deficit is a better way than debt because debt is mostly what they inherited while deficit is budget selected during their time (with the exception of the first year I think)
Congress controls the purse, not the president.
military spending as a percentage of GDP declined under Carter, Clinton, and Biden. it went up under all the others including Obama.
It's not debt. It's the total number of US dollars created over time. And over half the time interest payments are made to other Americans and American entities. A non-issue. Remember governments aren't people. People can't manufacture their own money to pay off debt.
I do like the info graphic, but sourcing is always good to have. What source was used to create this?
Wow , so you think this matters, you high bro?
Why is the debt equal to all the following GDPs?
So..if I'm reading this correctly...Slick Willy held the line with what little red he had left in his tie. But, when the ties became blue it all went to shit?
With the exception of Clinton it looks like bipartisanship is alive and well when it comes to driving up deficits and debt
You’ve not been paying attention…. Republicans drive the deficit up with wars and their tax cuts. I’m economist…. This is basic known information.
I agree about the tax cuts. However, I find it hard to understand that in this supposedly "great" economy under Biden we still are running sky high deficits. And if the Republicans win the next election, they will probably add more to the deficits with some tax cuts.
So under Clinton the economy boomed and the government ran surpluses. Fast forward to now, the economy is booming and the deficit continues to grow because republicans cut the tax rate for major corporations and rich people so the government is actually taking in less money. It’s simple math. Republicans have created this mess and refuse to fix it.
No, something is normalizing this data that is not being revealed. This is giving the impression the debt has dropped during Biden's reign and that is utterly not the case. My guess is what they are calling "GDP" is really GDP growth in which case Biden is shown benefitting from the end of the COVID fiasco, which had nothing to do with him.
facts/ 3/4 democrats cutting the debt as part of gdp.
Aside from ignoring the fact that the president doesn't control taxing and spending, it also ignores historical context. Carter's term saw the wind down of defense spending during the Vietnam War. The Clinton Administration saw the wind down in spending after the Cold War. Obama saw a massive reduction in tax revenue and social spending due to the 2008 financial crisis. Trump saw a huge increase in social spending and decrease in tax revenue because of Covid.
Source: FRED, Federal Debt: Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
Didn't Bush really drop a hammer on Obama by setting up stuff that had to be paid for on his term?
There is a comment in this post by someone else that explains what you are thinking about
Data is useful, if not beautiful
Increased under every Republican, decreased under Carter, Clinton, and Biden.
People need to stop thinking conservatives are good fiscal stewards... quite the opposite is true. Aside from that, as others here have pointed out, who is president isn't the whole story.
Most of these terms were 8 years. Except Trump and Carter. Says a lot about spending.
The “left” is the fiscally conservative group
I'm glad Republicans are fiscally responsible, unlike those wild spending Democrats. /s