Comments on: History of U.S. national debt

Question: History of U.S. national debt

Doohickie — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:20:27 -0800

Can anyone help my find a chart or data that shows U.S. national debt as a function of time, especially with correlation to presidential administrations?

I've looked but it's like trying to find a needle in a hay stack on Google. If I could find national debt by year (at least for the 20 Century), I could do the rest. Thanks. No, it's not for a homework assignment; I'm too old for that sh1t.

By: skybolt

skybolt — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:24:45 -0800

I did a quick google search, isn't this what you're looking for?

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

Do remember that until 1971, we were not a debtor nation. I'd like to say that it's all Nixon's fault for taking us off the gold standard, but that's probably not it.

I might have misunderstood --- there's the national debt and there's also the defecit. The federal defecit runs year to year, and historically is a lot more prevelant than the national debt. Roosevelt ran huge defecits, but becuase our trade balance overseas was in better shape, I don't think we had a national debt in WWII despite the huge defecits.

Does that help? Or am I just patting myself on the back?

By: skybolt

skybolt — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:26:11 -0800

The lower, smaller graph, not the larger, first graph. Sorry!

By: thewittyname

thewittyname — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:40:24 -0800

This page has a good discussion and set of graphs, as does this one.

By: yeti

yeti — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:43:00 -0800

Here's another one.

By: Doohickie

Doohickie — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:41:10 -0800

Hmmmm... those aren't quite reinforcing my memory, but that may be the data I'm looking for.

What I remember was that someone I worked with had a chart that showed.... national debt? budget deficit? maybe some other parameter? Something to that effect, as a function of time, with presidencies shown, and the point of the chart was that the debt/deficit/whatever it was was more the black when Democrats were in office, and more to the red when Republicans were. I saw the chart during the Clinton years. Maybe the only exception the rule was Roosevelt, for obvious reasons.

The thing I took away from the chart was that it kind turned the notion that Democrats were big spenders while Republicans were fiscally responsible on its ear.

By: thewittyname

thewittyname — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:54:43 -0800

Perhaps this, or this (although the second link does not include G.W Bush's term)? This is another chart, but it shows the annual deficit, not the debt.

By: milqman

milqman — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:28:43 -0800

If the purpose of the graph was to show/prove that "trend" then it was likely formed from non-typical statistics in order to make the conclusion appear a certain way. If that is the theme you want to convey, you will have to find _that_ graph or one pulled from similarly limited statistics. You will have a difficult time pulling that conclusion out of mainstream indicators of spendiness and thrift.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:20:48 -0800

Go to the source. The US Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt's Monthly Statement of the Public Debt and Downloadable Files, 1959 to the present.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:23:05 -0800

No graph, but a blog post I did a couple of years ago noted the annual debt level (and its percentage increase from the previous year) for 1981-2005.