Who increased the debt?

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Who Increased the Debt?

If you have a bunch of dumbass friends who post ill informed political tripe on their Facebook walls, you've probably seen this making the rounds lately:



This chart came from House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, and has been out since April of this year. Politifact looked in to, and gave the chart its lowest rating of Pants on Fire. One of the more glaring problems with that the debt from the first year of Obama's administration has been shifted to Bush, despite the dates on the chart not reflecting this. (Pelosi has released an updated chart, showing Bush at 86% and Obama at 35%.)

Now, there are some fair arguments that a lot of what happens early on in a president's term is due to the policies of the prior administration. But, the chart didn't do the same thing for other presidents on the chart. And, with Democrats controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, it's hard to blame Bush for the Democrats not acting to undo his mistakes, and in some cases doubling down on his policies.

The chart also looks only at the raw debt numbers, and not debt as a percentage of GDP. According to the Office of Budget Management, debt at percentage of GDP went up by 5.6% under Bush. Under Obama, it has increased 21.9%.

But really, the biggest problem with the chart is that it acts as if the President increases the debt. The real taxer and spender is the Congress.

What drove up spending from 2001-2009? "Bush's Wars," right? But, the vote to go to war in Afghanistan was nearly unanimous, opposed by only 1 Democrat. The vote to go in to Iraq was supported by 40% of Democrats. For both votes, Democrats controlled the Senate, and could have stopped either war.

Remember the bank bailouts? Sure, Bush was in office, but Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate at the time.

The fact of the matter is that the debt belongs to the mainstream of both parties. So, to reflect this, we've created a different, more accurate chart: