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There are Keynesians. The just aren't Republicans like people would expect.

A more data-based representation:
http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

This is probably the most politically biased webpage I've ever read.

A more data-based representation: http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

What worries me about a lot of the graphs on that page is that they either use numbers which aren't even adjusted for inflation, or they adjust for inflation but don't compare them to GDP. He gets it right in a few places, but most of the graphs aren't useable. Looking at the un-adjusted debt principals, yes, the numbers will tend to climb.

What I'm much more concerned about is debt as it relates to GDP. After all, if you owe $10 in debt, that's a serious problem if you only make $1 per year, but it's inconsequential if you make $1,000 per year.

So, look at debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP here: (http://zfacts.com/p/1195.html). You'll see that:

• The debt was once much higher than it is today.
• We were managing to pay it down... through Eisenhour, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter... and then Reagan started a precedent for Republican presidents to blow it sky-high.

I do agree with the webpage about trickle-down not working and that, for a steady economy, we need to get back to the higher taxes on the rich, like the 70%-90% on the highest tax brackets which were helping us pay down the WW-II debt consistently over 35 years until Reagan took office.

Historically, the economy has always done well with a Republican congress and a Democrat president...
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/245/982/Divided_we_make_money:_Why_the_stock_market_wants_a_Republican_victory.html

A more data-based representation:
http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

I halfway agree. The economy just seems to do pretty well with a Republican congress, but to be fair, it was slightly better under Clinton with a Repub congress than Bush with a Repub congress. I say that because the current Democratic congress has been a disaster, regardless of which party controls the WH.

My prediction: Expect the economy to improve and Obama take the credit. I believe we are about to see a repeat of the Clinton WH after Newt became Speaker of the House. Recent history has shown that the president has little effect on the economy. It's all congress.

Historically, the economy has always done well with a Republican congress and a Democrat president...
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/245/982/Divided_we_make_money:_Why_the_stock_market_wants_a_Republican_victory.html

A more data-based representation:
http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

And if you think I'm making this up, just look at this graph: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt_files/image002.jpg

Notice the very different slopes between the last 3 republican presidential administration and Clinton's. Reagan almost tripled the national debt, Bush I made it go up almost 50% to it and then good ole Baby Bush made it go up almost 80%. Damn that tax and spend "liberal", Bill Clinton, and his not piling on to the national debt as much as those "fiscally responsible" conservative presidents!

Here's a chart showing the US National debt with a nice timeline showing the president in charge, and any wars.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

There is no spike. There is a surge at the end of the Clinton administration, which lasts the entire duration of the bush administration. The national debt nearly doubles under his term.

Considering how big a hole was dug in the US economy (which has spread globally now), i don't expect any US government can truly recover from it in a matter of a few years. I honestly doubt they ever will, and instead will continue their slide into national debt until their debt explodes in another global crisis (if it doesn't go off this time)

I disagree that Bush acted on false intelligence. I don't think either of us can really KNOW the answer either. I worked for federal govt in Intel. for a couple of years (hated it) and I saw/read nothing that made me think otherwise. Of course I am just some anonymous jerk on the internet, and if I was reading this from somebody else, I wouldn't give it any weight either :)

There was enough intelligence to raise a flag on Iraq, there is no doubt of that. And that's why we had UN investigators on the ground pounding sand. Yeah, they were taking some heat and their should have been a stronger international force backing up their presence. But there was nothing factual that backed the need for war. Forget everything that you heard come from the mouths of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield in the build up. Listen to/watch the presentation that Colin Powel made to the UN. His staff stripped all of the intelligence that could not be coalborated out of his presentation and the biggest item he had to sell the war on was satelite imagery of shipping containers and semi-trailors that may or may not have contained biological weapons research facilities, and a few arms caches that violated the international limits placed on Saddam.

By the time the war was being sold to the UN, we already knew that the yellow cake paper work was bogus, we knew that the alluminum tubes that were originally claimed to be used in centrafuges were actually entirely the wrong spec. Those two key pieces of Intelligence were known to be false long before the US put troops on the ground in Iraq. And the perported link between Al Quida and Saddam was already tenuous and was proven to be all but non-existant shortly after the war started.

To answer some of your points, I don't think anybody blames Bush for 9/11 (do you?)?

I do not. I've heard the conspiracies, but I don't buy them. I blame Bush for not taking the security threats he inherited more seriously, but in the transition and coming off of 8 years of relative peace, I can understand his decision.

With regards to the deficit--the government has been running at a deficit for 50 years

With the exception of the 2nd Clinton term, you know when we had a surplus of over two hundred billion dollars in 2000 and with current trend was projected to hit 1 trillion dollars and pay off the national debt by 2010. Not that it actually would. If the government had a 1 Trillion dollar surplus, taxes would drop, politicians would be re-elected, and the actual debt payoff would be pushed out further, but we'd be moving in the right direction.

Take a look at the trend of the federal debt http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm Out of the last 50 year, only the last 30 have been explosive. And in that time it has been the Republican Presidents that have been the worst offenders. Sure, Clinton might have been a tax and spend liberal, but every republican elected in the last 30 years has been a borrow and spend liberal. Only difference is that with Clinton, people were more interested in being fiscally responsible since we were footing the bill. With everyone else, we've just gone hog wild with spending because we can sell all of our debt off to China and Japan.

People don't realize how much intelligence and military were able to "step down" in the 90s...obviously this is now reversed.

Why? Because we wanted to take a military action against a non-state sponsored terrorist organization by attacking one of the most inhospitable and war ravaged countries in the world with a population where almost every citizen is a veterain of military conflict? Was attacking Afghanistan really a net gain in our security? Or should we have focused more on intelligence spending and track down the money and real power brokers?

And Iraq was a complete debacle. There were reasons to go in, but those

Could someone tell me what this "economic conservatism" thing means? Looking at the national debt it's not tied to a balanced budget, I know that much...

Whyever do you think that the Democrats are in favour of fiscal conservatism?

Mainly because I (and presumably the parent) have seen a number of graphs that look like this.

History has also shown that the economy and national debt have consistently improved under a Democratic President and consistently worsened under a Republican. http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm So why don't you vote for Obama for President, and your local Republicans for Congress?

One thing I find tiring is the assumption that a president is unilaterally responsible for the economy during their term(s) of office, when in fact it's generally the complete opposite.

If you take another look at the federal debt by presidency chart, and compare it with this chart showing the employment recessions of the past 60 years, you might notice another trend. When people lose their jobs, they vote in another president.

So it shouldn't come as a big surprise that presidents are willing to inflate the economy by going further into debt to remain in office. Reagan pushed the envelope harder than anyone prior, and he is one of the most heralded presidents in history.

And while it's easy to blame the Republicans, it should be noted that the trend should only be associated with the Republican party itself, and not conservative politics. It's easy to say conservatives screw up the economy and liberals fix it, but in Canada it's the exact opposite. Since we've had Trudeau as prime minister back in the Reagan years, it has traditionally been liberals screwing our economy and conservatives fixing it. (I know what's in the news, they say Harper has "sent us back into deficit", but Paul Martin only eliminated the deficit by diverting funds from health care, which now lies in ruin, and he didn't have troops in Afghanistan.)

Traditionally, the US is conservative-minded, and Canada is liberal-minded. Unfortunately our political bias does not determine the direction of our respective countries, it determines what politicians pitch to get elected, and that's all. Once elected, they do whatever they want.

Elections will never mean anything until elected officials are held accountable for fulfilling their election promises.

Spending has gone up with both parties in control of the presidency or the congress. The main difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats raise taxes when they spend more, but the Republicans don't. Here's a nice write-up on the national debt over the years:

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

Unfortunately, he doesn't provide inflation-adjusted graphs, which would be interesting.

This is one thing I find funny about "political sloganism" - the Republicans always talk about "tax and spend Democrats", but never talk about the fact that the republicans are the "don't tax but spend anyway" party. As an individual you can't spend money if you don't make money, and there's no reason for the government to be any different. (and many reasons for the government to be the same - read "The Creature From Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin for a lot of interesting information about how the financial system works)

Well, for those of you that might think to argue in favor of "conservative" liberals or Reaganomics, check out this interesting graph that illustrates National Debt by president. While it's not always true that the president can control spending (it's mostly congress & senate proposing them), it sure does nullify any idea that Republican presidents spend less than Obama.

They're both going to spend the hell out of our money. The only difference might be whether it comes from us or gets put on our nation's maxed out credit card.

Neither of them are going to solve the economic problem. This economic downturn is too deep and complicated for it to be put down as Bush's fault or for either of them to solve. So it's not going to affect my vote, what's done is done. How they propose to handle it sounds fairly similar--more preventative regulation. And I'm pretty much all for that. Who's the dumbshit that was allowing institutions to hand out loans to people without even checking their income level? Yeah, laissez faire is great and all but in its purest form idiots will ruin things. Need a happy middle ground.

At the root of it all, a national debt means that government wants to expand its business faster than the people have agreed to fund it, and likewise faster than the people are even capable of supporting it. Especially a continously-expanding, never-ending national debt like in the US.

What else could it possibly mean? Surely you don't believe that the people actually wanted the national debt to increase and approved of it for every year since 1938, much less for it to become nearly exponential in growth over the past 20 or 30 years?

Let's call upon our good friend Common Sense to draw a conclusion here: the reason for the national debt is government greed, not rational economic decision, let alone the will of the people.

If I recall correctly, Clinton closed the deficit. That is, for some period during his presidency our debt was not going up. The debt has existed for a very long time, going back essentially to the founding of the nation.

Some good information and graphs on the debt can be found here: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm. It also puts to bed some of the myths about who grows the debt (everybody), who shrinks it (nobody), who it grows more under (Republicans), the last time the debt has gone down at all (Kennedy), etc. A lot of the conclusions seem to fly in the face of conventional wisdom on these topics.

The site does seem to lean a little bit left, with a particular dislike of Bush, but it seems to be more focused on what he and other groups do to the deficit and debt in particular. It's certainly interesting no matter how you slice it.

It would be interesting to see if the Congressional Democrats fared as well as their counterparts in the executive in matters of fiscal responsibility.

The answer, not surprisingly, is No. The last time the debt actually decreased was 1961.

There are a number of different places that show this, but this is the first one I found in google.

The reason for the difference is that Republicans are opposed in doctrine to a balanced budget. Supply-side economics demand tax cuts, with the justification that they'll make back what they spend when the economy grows. The economy DOES grow, but they cut taxes again. This cycle means that their doctrine demands perpetual debt, and our kids are effectively subsidizing our economic development, becuase the doctrine will NEVER allow for taxes to be high enough to pay any of it back.

the nation financially "challenged", to put it mildly

here are some numbers :
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
and
http://www.lafn.org/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html

maybe you should check your sources. In case you're feeling a bit lazy, I'll provide you with a few links:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
and
http://www.lafn.org/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html

• Massive spending spree - agree with you there
• Constitution - examples from past presidents show similar constitutional challenges
• Lying to go to war - Was it a lie or a misinterpretation of the evidence? Hind sight is always 20/20. I'm of the opinion that we should have presented any findings to the UN and IAEA inspectors to verify though.
• Outing undercover agents - Seems the exact details are a bit unclear here, even in researching articles on it. Definitely suspicious.

Conservatives tend to prefer inflation to more traditional taxes to pay for the stuff they throw money at. Liberals like inflation, too, but they are more willing to mix it with some tax increases. Either way, the government increases it's slice of the pie. Here's a nice indicator: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

This election isn't really as much about Liberal versus Conservative as people would have us believe, its more about whether or not to continue truly incompetent, nationally destructive leadership or not. The truth is, no radicals made it into the final two (McCain vs. Obama). Both very much believe in the status quo, but how to maintain it is how they differ. I sincerely doubt that you'll find siginificant reductions in worldwide military bases under Obama, for example.

Regarding the U.S. debt, you are absolutely correct that it is the largest debt in the history of the world. However, what you ignore is its relative size. The size of the U.S. debt relative to US. GDP is not terribly large when compared to the historic debts racked up by other great powers. Historically, other great powers would survive debts of up to 200% of their GDP. The U.S. debt is not yet even 100% of GDP. Thus, while I too am troubled by the size of the U.S. debt, the level of alarmism in your post I consider unwarranted.

Please see this chart of U.S. debt. The red bars indicate the absolute numbers, which are indeed climbing to unparalleled heights. However, the blue line shows the debt as a percentage of GDP. As you can plainly see, our current amount of debt is not the worst we've ever faced, in fact we've faced debt burdens almost twice as bad in our recent history.

This does not, of course, alter the fact that U.S. real growth per year is the usual 3% that mature economies face, while China's has been about 10% per year for the last 30 years, and they still have quite a lot of potential growth left in them. Still, scare-mongering about the state of the U.S. economy does not help the pursuit of a rational, long-term national interest.

Last time the Soviet's spent themselves into exinction, so let's just hope it's not us this time.

Naaaaaah.

Please don't interpret this as a defense of the Republican Party, but you have made this claim twice now without citing a source to back it up.

Here is a graph of the national debt by year, with the Presidents helpfully color coded.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/USDebt_files/im age001.jpg

It shows that under Republican rule the debt not only tends to increase, but so does the rate of growth of the debt.

If you view the graphic in log scale, it flattens some of the current spending, but it also clearly shows that the debt grows faster under GOP rule.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/us_debt_log.png

A typical Republican answer to all of this is that it's not such a big deal, because the economy as a whole is growing, and as such, one should view the debt as a percentage of GDP.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/USDebt_files/im age002.jpg

When one does that, it becomes even more clear that the GOP is the big spender of the political parties.

As for the rest of your claims, I'd simply note that since 2000 the debt has grown by 3.5 trillion dollars. For perspective, total federal tax revenues in 2000 were just about 2 trillion dollars.

The Republicans are huge spenders. I know they claim otherwise, but the facts neatly disprove those claims.

Please don't interpret this as a defense of the Republican Party, but you have made this claim twice now without citing a source to back it up.

Here is a graph of the national debt by year, with the Presidents helpfully color coded.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/USDebt_files/im age001.jpg

It shows that under Republican rule the debt not only tends to increase, but so does the rate of growth of the debt.

If you view the graphic in log scale, it flattens some of the current spending, but it also clearly shows that the debt grows faster under GOP rule.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/us_debt_log.png

A typical Republican answer to all of this is that it's not such a big deal, because the economy as a whole is growing, and as such, one should view the debt as a percentage of GDP.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/USDebt_files/im age002.jpg

When one does that, it becomes even more clear that the GOP is the big spender of the political parties.

As for the rest of your claims, I'd simply note that since 2000 the debt has grown by 3.5 trillion dollars. For perspective, total federal tax revenues in 2000 were just about 2 trillion dollars.

The Republicans are huge spenders. I know they claim otherwise, but the facts neatly disprove those claims.

Please don't interpret this as a defense of the Republican Party, but you have made this claim twice now without citing a source to back it up.

Here is a graph of the national debt by year, with the Presidents helpfully color coded.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/USDebt_files/im age001.jpg

It shows that under Republican rule the debt not only tends to increase, but so does the rate of growth of the debt.

If you view the graphic in log scale, it flattens some of the current spending, but it also clearly shows that the debt grows faster under GOP rule.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/us_debt_log.png

A typical Republican answer to all of this is that it's not such a big deal, because the economy as a whole is growing, and as such, one should view the debt as a percentage of GDP.

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/USDebt_files/im age002.jpg

When one does that, it becomes even more clear that the GOP is the big spender of the political parties.

As for the rest of your claims, I'd simply note that since 2000 the debt has grown by 3.5 trillion dollars. For perspective, total federal tax revenues in 2000 were just about 2 trillion dollars.

The Republicans are huge spenders. I know they claim otherwise, but the facts neatly disprove those claims.

Who do you think is lending you all that money? Think about it. No, on second thoughts don't waste your time, just Google it.

Attempting for the first time in our history to amend our constitution for the sole purpose of discriminating against a group of people based solely upon how they were born out of ignorant religious based hatred *is* pure religious extremism.

Sorry, I'm completely missing your reference here. I didn't know Presidents could amend the consitution, but that aside, what are you talking about?

Ahhh, the old tired "but Clinton" whine. You lose.

That is the whole POINT of this thread! You claim that it is impossible to cannot compare the parties, so I am showing you how they are essentially the same. To paraphrase Michael Palin, an argument isn't the automatic gainsaying of what the other guy says. You can't automatically ignore counter arguments just because they don't validate your postulates. That's silly.

Followed up with an idiotic lie

Oooh! A link war! Let me play too! How about this? Or this?

The fact that you can't pull your head out of your partisan hackery...

I did not vote for Bush. Either Bush. The last Republican I voted for was Reagan in his first term. I apologize for that, but it was my first election, and the giddiness of the moment overwhelmed me.

I'm only trying to point out that Democrats aren't the sacred angelic beings you pretend they are. I would not have even bothered responding, except for your stupid signature about murdering people.

I'm not now, nor have I ever been a member or supporter of any major political party.

Let me guess... you voted for Kerry?

"The biggest, IMHO, is that switching to them ends up taxing people's savings - especially retirement savings - twice. It was taxed once, at various rates, while it was was being squirreled away. Then it gets taxed again, at confiscatory rates, when it is spent."

You do know that most (all?) federal retirement plans are pretax, right?

http://www.irs.gov/retirement/index.html

"Right now is especially nasty, since you've got the entire baby boom just reaching retirement age. They've already been massively soaked by the Social Security pyramid scheme to give bread and circuses to previous generations - amid constant predictions that it would collapse when THEY retired."

Source

"Myth #1: Social Security is in crisis and facing bankruptcy.

Even if Congress were to leave Social Security untouched, the program would be able to pay currently guaranteed benefits in full until 2042, according to the program's trustees. Thereafter, about 70 percent of promised benefits could be financed. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is even more optimistic: it projects that, without changes, Social Security will be able to meet its obligations in full until 2053, after which about 80 percent of benefits still could be paid for. Even under those worst-case scenarios, decades from now the system would be far from "bankrupt," "flat-out bust," or "broke," which imply that no resources would be available to pay any benefits. At that time, workers and their employers still will be contributing payroll taxes to finance benefits for retirees.

So Social Security is facing a long-term financing problem, but it is far from a "crisis" by any definition of that word. And the problem is much less immediate and threatening now than in the recent past, even though no changes have been made to the program. In 1997, Social Security's trustees had projected that the program's trust funds would last only another thirty-two years and would be depleted in 2029. Those forecasts have improved steadily-largely because of stronger than expected economic growth-so that the trust funds now are expected to remain sufficient for thirty-seven more years.

Like a doctor who recommends "watchful waiting" while a patient becomes healthier, Congress should think twice before performing radical surgery on an enormously successful program that appears to be getting better with age. "

"So they had to build their own retirement nest-eggs on top of it, while paying the ever-climbing interest on the national debt (which first became intractable when their parents ran the Vietnam War on credit, back when the bulk of the boomers were opposing it)."

Later than that.

"And: Sales taxes zap the lower income earners harder than the upper (since the lower-income people are working hand-to-mouth and need to spend pretty much all of it, while the upper can avoid spending much of it - investing it to make more, moving it to places and situations where the tax can be avoided before spending it, etc.). This scheme attempts to avoid the effect by "rebating" a certain amount of tax to each individual - approximating a flat-tax plus dole scheme. What a massive opportunity for cheating (by creating multiple fake identities to get multiple "rebates".) What a massive excuse for the government to impose a national ID / registration / citizen tracking system."

Flat Tax fiascos

Hmmm, interesting there's no biblical "flat tax" :)

During the Clinton administration. The deficit went to near zero during his term and we were well on our way to actually reducing the debt in the following presidency. Then, we got the "terrah" president in office and made a complete 180 with the fastest government spending growth in the nation's history. His presidency has increased the national debt by about as much as the TOTAL national debt at the end of Reagan's presidency. That's six years of Bush Jr. doing as much damage to our economy as the fifty years of deficit spending from 1938 to 1988, including the Vietnam/Korean Conflicts, World War II, and the entire cold war era PUT TOGETHER all in the course of six years of Junior's presidency.

Never before in our country's history has a president allowed government spending to balloon in such an uncontrolled fashion as it has in the past six years. Even if he hadn't gotten us into Iraq, his economic policies alone would make him the worst president in our nation's history.

Source: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

...and people wonder why our economy is in such sad shape.... Remember, kids: Democrats tax and spend. Republicans just spend.

GDP to Debt ratio in the US going down? I think you need to actually take a look at some statistics before making a claim like that.

A quick search finds data
here or
here readily contridicting your statement. We have gone from about 58% when Bush to office to about 64% now. Another thing to realize is that the projected government expenditures on medicare and social security are about to explode. Demographics are going to make the simple outgrow the deficit thesis very hard to support.

I think they know they Democrats will get in next time, and they're going to hand them a mountain of debt, which they'll try and sort out, causing a serious cooling of the economy. Then four years later, back will come the Republicans, saying "remember how good you had it under us?"

Here's an interesting chart.

Dude, there are two things wrong with this:

• It's perfectly fine to change your mind when new data comes to light, holding on to a belief against evidence is stupidity.
• Bush does change his standpoint from time to time, just look at the whole "Let's ignore Bin laden" to "war on terr".

Really, Bush and his handlers have run your country into the ground, demonstrated their complete lack of respect for human and civil rights as well as your own constitution and yet there are sheep like you who just bend over while praising the Great Leader.

I mean, doesn't a graph like this one tell you that Reagan, Bush I and Bush II are not conservatives, but rather creditcard maxing out white trash?

Doesn't conservatism mean spending less money?

Yeah, damn those big government liberals. All they ever do is tax and spend.
Conservatives (if that's what you want to call modern Republicans) are so much better, they don't tax and spend. They spend and spend.

This isn't a pork graph, but... haha.

Hahah... yes, how on Earth could somebody get confused about that. I am referring specifically to how f''(x) > 0 on the red portions of this graph and 0 for the blue.

Heh, this is almost fun.

Nope, this is just your usual dictatorship FUD; keep the population poor, afraid and ignorant.

Poor:

An Analysis of the Presidents Who Are Responsible For Excessive Spending
Bush Borrowed More Than All Previous Presidents Combined, Group Says
Surplus? US Debt Pushes $6 Trillion
U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK (this is a very interesting one, in my humble opinion)

(hint: guess whose taxes are going to pay for that)

Afraid:

U.S. Department of Defense News About The War On Terrorism
The War On Terrorism
AMERICA'S WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

Ignorant:

Education Not a Bush Budget Priority, Representative Miller to Testify
Bush Budget Slashes Education, Other Domestic Programs
$2.5 Trillion Budget Plan Cuts Many Programs
Bush administration Cuts Public School Funding to Pay for New Private School Voucher Scheme

And you complain about China? I'm afraid you have the same problems in your country (assuming you're American).

I saw a chart recently of the national debt over time. It was more or less under a trillion until 1980 or so, then it just rose and rose and rose and rose, until Clinton, where there was a genuine inflection point, then after 2000, the chart just went off the scale. It was really quite dramatic. And, I should mention, I'm not a Democrat in the slightest. I just don't understand presidential politics when charts like this counter the party lines. I wonder if it is better to have a Democratic figurehead as president with Libertarian-leaning people in the trenches at local and state levels.

I don't remember exactly which chart I saw, but, from a search, here is a good one and here is another version.

People were saying these things and freaking out just like this when Reagan passed his tax cuts and less than ten years later the debt was gone, grown out of by the huge economic boom they inspired.

What?????!!!!! *Boggle*

No wonder people voted for Reagan and Bush Jr. believing shit like that.

The debt has constantly grown for at least a century and practically tripled under Reagan. The deficit has mostly grown as well, except for the years under Clinton where it finally went down and was just about to become a surplus before Bush passed his tax cuts.

See:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
http://www.littlepiggy.net/deficit/index.php
http://members.tripod.com/~zzpat/graphs.htm
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/5Debt.htm