Actually, the debt was around 100% or more of the GDP in 1946, but then it came down during the economic expansion of the late 1940s and into the 1950s.
But we did pay it down, too. We paid it down until the 1980s when Reagan and Congressional Democrats ignored the debt for a while, but then Clinton paid it down again.
Here's why the debt is out of control in 2023 (as I think the chart makes perfectly clear):
- We had two wars that lasted the better part of 10-20 years.
- We not only had tax cuts during the Bush years but even tax rebates
- We had the worst economic crisis in 80 years beginning in the final year of Bush's term
- We spent vast sums of money to get out of the crisis but we didn't raise enough taxes to cover the spending
- Trump and the GOP gave the rich a tax break with no substantive decrease in spending
- COVID relief in the trillions but with no tax increases
I was wrong when I posted we hadn't had tax increases since the 1990s - Obama got one passed at the end of his first term, I believe. But we've had two waves of massive emergency spending in the last 15 years and they were both woefully underfunded. I was also incorrect when I suggested that Democrats could have somehow used their majority to rescind the debt limit, as it's not a rule but the result of several acts. The difference now, and the reason there's a potential crisis, is that previous congressional majorities and minorities understood it's not a good idea to weaponize the US' full faith and credit.
Democrats are not blameless, and I agree that some hard and unpopular spending cuts will probably have to be made, but it's just richly ironic to see Republicans talking about their debt fears. Republicans object to taxes not spending, and that is the single biggest reason we're here.
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