Ben Templesmith, a comic book writer and artist, posted this link via twitter the other day. Turns out Ben is apparently quite the political commenter.
Anyway, the article he posted is quite interesting. In short, it looks at the value of the national debt as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) over the last 58 years. What’s interesting here is that the percentage of debt dropped significantly during Democratic presidencies, but rose sharply during Republican presidencies. This flies in the face of Republican claims of fiscal responsibility. Here’s the chart from the article:
And another from a related article:
Most of the excuses I’ve heard for this revolve around the previous presidents causing a decline that didn’t occur until they were out of office. They, in effect, reversed the trend of previous Republican presidents while the were in office, but the effects were not felt until the next president was in office. Based on the above charts, however, it appears that’s not the case.
There are, of course, other factors as well. For instance, I’m willing to bet that the GDP increased quite a bit over the course of those 58 years. It’s quite possible that the GDP increased faster than the debt dropped. In fact, this image from Wikipedia proves this point:
The image page on Wikipedia has the raw numbers, but to summarize, the GDP was roughly $1 trillion in 1950 and $57 trillion in 2007. That’s a 5700% increase in GDP. So let’s break this down a bit.
In 1950, debt was roughly 90% of GDP which puts it at $900 billion. In 1980, debt was somewhere around 35% of GDP. GDP in 1980 was $9.5 trillion, so debt was $3.3 trillion. That’s a $2.4 trillion, or 260% increase in debt over the course of 30 years. GDP increased 950% during the same time.
During the Bush/Reagan years, debt jumped to 65% of GDP. GDP at the end of 1992 was $22.8 trillion which puts debt at $14.8 trillion. That’s an increase of $11.5 trillion, a 350% increase while GDP only increased 240%.
On to the Clinton years where GDP increased to $30 trillion and debt decreased to about 60%, or $18 trillion. So while the percent of debt decreased, debt itself actually increased roughly 120%. GDP increased 130% over the same time, so things were generally a wash.
Finally, the Bush Jr years. GDP in 2007 was $57 trillion and debt was about 70% or $39.9 trillion. That’s a 220% increase in debt, more than doubling the debt since Clinton. GDP only increased 190%, so we actually lost more money than we gained.
Based on these numbers, I think we can comfortably say that the original article is correct. During the Republican years, we lost more money than we increased, and during the Democratic years, it was the opposite. So who’s more fiscally responsible?