Thursday, October 4, 2007

Clinton raised the national debt 4.3% per year. The Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush II) raised the debt at 10.8% per year

United States National Debt | (1938 to Present) | An Analysis of the Presidents Who Are Responsible for the Borrowing | By Steve McGourty | Update History | 6 May 2007, Third Revision

The chart below, Figure 1, shows the United States national debt (per Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia[1] and US Government data[2]) with the various Presidents’ terms marked by vertical lines. Under President Clinton the growth in debt ceased, but note the radical change in direction since George W. Bush entered office. There is no question and a lot of mathematical proof that the steepest upward rises in debt since the end of World War II, started with President Reagan and continued with other so called Neo-Conservatives. (See red in Figure 1 below. For larger views of any graph in this paper just put your mouse pointer over the graph and click on it).
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For the mathematically inclined, if you take the first derivative of the data presented to find the slope of each President’s debt increase, you will find that the Republican slopes are consistently more positive than the Democratic slopes. For everyone else, this just means that unbiased mathematical proof exists to support the claim that since 1945, Republican presidents have borrowed more than Democratic presidents regardless of the inflation rate[4].
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Comparing the borrowing habits of the two parties since 1981, when the Neo-Conservative movement really took hold and government spending raced out of control, it is extremely obvious that the big spenders in Washington are Republicans and their party’s presidents. The only Democratic president since then, Mr. Clinton raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year. The Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush II) raised the debt an average of 10.8% per year. That is, for every dollar a Democratic President has raised the national debt in the past 25 years, Republican presidents have raised the debt by $2.53[6]. Any way you look at it Neo-Conservative Republican presidents cannot or will not control government spending. ...

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