Deficits, Deficits, Deficits!!

I was asked yesterday if the national deficit had become greater under the Obama or the G.W. Bush administrations. The question stimulated me to do some research to finally answer that question without doubt. The facts are as follows:

Under President Bush, the national debt added $4.5 trillion over the 8 years he was in office leaving, at the end, a national debt of $10.2 trillion. Under President Obama, the national debt increased by $4.2 trillion in his first 2½ years in office. Our national debt now stands at $14.5 trillion. The Obama administration is asking for another annual budget that will expand the national debt by more than another $1 trillion. These figures can be gleaned from several places and are part of the public domain. They are reliable.

Republicans see these figures as very dangerous; and believe that we should do all in our power to reduce the debt. If we do not, conservatives see America sinking into the same pothole as Greece.

The national debt of the United States now stands at greater than 100% of our GDP (gross national product). Reliable economists have said that a debt/GDP ratio greater than 90% prevents a government from managing its economy constructively.

Democrats and liberals of all kinds see the situation differently. They point to a set of data released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May 2011 that resulted in a graph, which shows that the largest piece of the national debt is caused by the Bush tax cuts. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have little effect on the resultant national debt. To peruse this graph, control click on the following link http://bit.ly/yPwpeR . What this graph fails to depict is the fact that the largest part of our national deficit, by far, is spending on entitlements.

Personally, I still think that taking money away from investing private citizens will have a bad effect on the business and employment climate situation in America. I think the overspending MUST BE REINED IN.