By Phillip Bump
Since President Obama (click here) took office, the national debt has increased by $7.4 trillion. On January 20, 2009, it stood at $10.6 trillion; on Monday, it was at $18 trillion. That bit of data leapt to the front page of The Drudge Report on Tuesday, linking to an assessment from CNS News.com. The increase, the site's Terence Jeffrey writes, "is $65,443 per household, $70,985 per full-time worker and $84,266 per full-time private-sector worker." Grim.
We thought those figures deserved some context....
...Before 2009, it was relatively flat. Then, it exploded -- almost entirely in the "held by public" part of the debt.
But if you zoom in a little closer, say, from January 2008 to January 2010, you see something interesting: the fuse was lit before Obama took office. (Note that this graph is only the "held by the public" part of the debt.)
That's because the increase in debt in the early years of the Obama administration was a largely a response to the imploding economy -- just as the big bulge at the end of the George W. Bush administration (2008) was.
Debt increases are a function of the government not being able to pay its bills. Too little revenue (taxes) compared to costs (spending), and you have a deficit. Since 2002, this is what quarterly deficits (or, rarely, surpluses) have looked like....
Remember this guy?
Remember this guy?
If there is another global economic collapse, count in escalating deficits and debts globally. THAT IS NOT OUR PROBLEM! Republicans had forty years to carry out their economic strategies to secure the world from impoverishment. They destroyed regulation and we know the result. Local economies OWN THEMSELVES without worrying about any other issues. The National Debt will get paid when it gets paid. Every day will be like the next and it will be absolutely vital our local economies keep chugging along. No one is going to shutter the USA military. The world will still turn and we will have lives to live.