National Debt – What, Me Worry?

If you care about the country going bankrupt, it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Both parties seem to be indifferent to it. There's only a small difference in the size of their trillion-dollar spending bills.

 

Below are two graphs. The first shows, from the best source I could find, the spending and revenue of the United States over the last 30 years. We actually had a small surplus in the last two years of the Clinton Administration. Then things went south. Bush started a couple of unnecessary wars and added Medicare Part D. Obama continued those wars, failed to take ISIS seriously and threw in some stimulus. Trump wanted to build up the military, already the largest in the world, but the democrats would only agree if they got a proportional boost to their favorite domestic programs. The lines clearly show what happened. 

 

 

Just as a thought experiment, suppose the rate of increase of federal government spending had remained the same as it was from 1990 to 2000 under Bush (R) and Clinton (D) – not the same level of spending, but the same rate of increase. Here is what that would have looked like. 

 

Even with the two tax cuts that politicians told us would cause huge problems; many of those years would have run a surplus fed by growth in the economy over the past 8 years or so. 

 

Now this exact scenario would likely not have been possible due to the increased Social Security outlays as the Baby Boomers hit retirement age. But still, if you ask people over the age of 45 how life was during the 1990s, how well needs were being met; the majority would say that things were fine. 

 

The question is: how much of that extra spending went to real improvement, how much was pure waste, and how much went to buying your vote (using your own money to do it)?

 

We hope for responsible leaders; but when it comes to spending, politicians take the attitude of Alfred E. Newman, the fictitious mascot of Mad Magazine.