The green line is revenue (taxes), the pink line is spending, and the dark red line is debt.
The horizontal lines are spaced one trillion dollars apart.
The range is from zero at the bottom to eleven trillion dollars at the top.
Click to embiggen.
The horizontal lines are spaced one trillion dollars apart.
The range is from zero at the bottom to eleven trillion dollars at the top.
Click to embiggen.
I got the base graph for this from an article in USA Today. Their version is "interactive", meaning it will show you the actual dollar amounts for any point on the graph when you mouse over it. I added the Presidents and the colored bars for the parties: yellow for Republicans, aqua for Democrats. I wanted pastels so they wouldn't overpower the lines, and I wasn't up to mixing my own colors for this, so yellow and aqua will just have to do.
Note this graph goes all the back to WWII, which is what the little bump at the left side is all about. After that the debt slowly declined until the very end of Ford's term when it started up. Carter didn't seem to have much effect, one way or the other, but Reagan sure put us on the map. Things were going so well under Clinton that we were actually able to start reducing this huge debt. Then we got G.W. and his neo-cons and the sky became the limit. Things haven't slowed down under Obama, and I am sorry to see that.
If we don't get this debt thing under control, things are going to get much worse.
Update October 2016 replaced missing graph. However, linked larger version is gone and all the other links are dead.
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