RSSThe Growing National Debt Debt Held by the Public 1968 - 2007
This is the cumulative amount of money that the government has borrowed from outside sources to meet its obligations during the years that it runs deficits. Debt Held by the Public includes domestic buyers, such as mutual funds, state and local governments, Federal Reserve banks, commercial banks, insurance companies, and individuals, as well as private foreign entities and central banks of foreign countries. Of the $5.1 trillion in outstanding public debt at the end of 2007, domestic investors owned 55 percent ($2.8 trillion) and foreign investors held 45 percent ($2.2 trillion). When the government runs surpluses, the debt gets paid down as can be seen from the trough in the late 1990s.
But wait a minute! All of the so-called “debt clocks” show that the national debt is now in excess of $9 trillion. Where is the $4 trillion discrepancy? Answer: See the next two charts (Growing National Debt: Intragovernmental Holdings and The Growing National Debt: Combined).
10 Responses to “The Growing National Debt Debt Held by the Public 1968 - 2007”
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June 16th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
notice how when Republicans are in office, the debt per person goes up, and when a Democrat is in office, it goes down. If Perot doesn’t run this year, we clearly cannot afford John McCain to be President.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Apparently, you are having trouble understanding the chart.
Look carefully, you will see a steady rise in the debt between the years of 1993-1998 when there was a Democrat in power.
June 17th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
@fdkay If you look at the chart on page 11 you’ll see that a sharp decrease in spending and increase in taxation happens at the beginning of the Clinton era and the dip on this chart coincides with the surplus that was created around the beginning of his second term.
@diamondjay the correlation I think has less to do with the party and more to do with the actual actions of the people in power. A republican at the helm could just as easily pull their head out of their rear and do good for this country just as a democrat could easily keep on keeping on with in the same manner as usual. It is much easier for politicians to play it as a false dichotomy wherein both sides blame all the ills on the other. When the reality of the situation is much more complicated and probably involves a lot of people “on your team” messing things up just as badly as the “those other people”.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
You got that right! These last eight years have been the trickle down effect of “The Clinton Administration.” Everything Ross told us with his charts in 1992 and 1996 have happened. I voted for him both times and wished that he had WON!!! We need something, what I’m not sure.
June 21st, 2008 at 7:40 pm
fdkay, you’ll notice that from 1993-1998, the increase is a much less steep line than administrations before it. That means it was increasing much less than it was in the Reagan/Bush/Bush years.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
DiamondJay- you might want to consider what major national and world events were occuring during the timeframes covered. I would expect to see spending increases during periods where we had national disasters, wartime and economic downturns. You might recall that the Vietnam War was in full force in 1968, and the Cold War ended during Reagan’s term. I have a hard time explaining why the debt grew nearly a trillion dollars during Clinton’s two relatively peaceful terms, except for the end of his term because he raised taxes, sold off military bases and downsized everything but entitlement programs.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Also Diamondjay- you might want to consider that President Johnson initiated (and his heavily Democratic Congress approved) the Medicare/Medicaid entitlement programs in 1965, the Dept of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, the Truth in Lending Act and 10 Environmental protection acts, between 1965 and 1969, all of which required tax revenues to support, as part of his “Great Society” plan.
Every president after that, whether Republican or Democrat, was saddled with those programs which have continued to grow and expand exponentially since then, as well as having to deal with any major world or national events durng his term/s. If you look at the true cost of our military actions after deducting the additional tax revenues derived by the wartime economies they created, you will see that the growth in our social programs and the interest we are paying to fund deficit budgets is almost solely responsible for the growth in the national debt.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:24 am
Data clearly shows that budget deficits and increases in national debt occur much more under Republican Presidents then Democratic. An interesting surprise for most. Of course times change, other forces impact life, yet Republicans do not raise taxes to pay for increased spending, they shift the burden to future generations, whereas Democrats raise taxes. Each of us chooses among the two poisons when we vote.
Biggest concern for me is not even shown in these charts. It is the increasing amount of our debt held by foreigners. Individuals, corporations and sovereign nation funds are purchasing America as if at a fire sale. We are selling our real estate, public corporations, private companies, and treasury bills to outsiders. China and Japan alone control almost 2 trillion dollars of our debt. If we do not do what they want they can bring us to a 1930’s depression within a week.
We are losing our Freedom through our poor education and economic conditions, and I fear that more than terrorism, or national invasion.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Have you all lost sight of the most egregious and menacing of all forms of spending. All the billions spent in iraq and Afgahnistan and in 700 bases around the world; that’s the elephant in the room. Where are the charts for military spending, Compare us to the rest of the word in military spending. How about projections for what all the bases built in Iraq. There’s an embassy in Baghdad that is as big as a city . And don’t tell me that is the cost of the “war on terror”.
If terrorists can force us into such crazy spending then we will lose and they won’t have to bring down a single building .
We are out to build a very expensive anti-ballistic missile system in Europe and we are building a huge base in Macedonia and yet nobody even discusses whether we need them. Remember ABM systems have yet to prove themselves and are seen as creating instability. The ABM peddlers (Rumsfeld was one of them) have been trying to foist this expensive and unproven system on the US for decades and have failed repeatedly. If they succeed in setting up in Europe they will soon want to expand these systems stateside which means only one thing more money out of our pockets.
We have built a fine military machine but it going to ruin us.. It is a machine that keeps on sucking more resources . One could paraphrase your earlier sucking sound analogy, Ross; the giant sucking sound today is in that black hole called military spending. It i sucking our children’s future
Do you really want a retiree to cut back his/ her measly check so brass, contractors and enlisted men can continue to posture around the world “protecting our system of values” when our values are more threatened from families having no health insurance or higher education. the later is free in Europe where they have not fought a war in generations (exception made of Blairs’s England that still fancies itself an empire).
Ross you did a splendid job waking this nation up to the deficits in the 1990’s it is time to reexamine this time bomb but let’s get our facts straight first .
July 28th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Rigos4,
First…take a deep breath. Good!
Now, in answer to your question, “Where are the charts for military spending [?],” let’s look at four charts that have been present on the website since the first day it was launched.
http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges-charts/page/15/
http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges-charts/page/16/
http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges-charts/page/17/
http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges-charts/page/19/
These charts attempt to put defense spending into perspective with respect to other forms of spending.
Another chart was posted a few weeks ago in response to questions that we had received about spending in the War on Terror. You might find it interesting, apparently since you had not seen it when you laucned you comment. The text below the link is the comment that accompanies the chart, and which, once again, tries to put defense spending into context with the federal budget.
http://perotcharts.com/category/budget-deficit-charts/page/13/
“Estimates by the Congressional Budget Office place total funding for operations of the Iraq and Afghanistan War on Terrorism at $651 billion as of December 2007. This amount includes $87 billion of the $188 billion requested by the President for 2008. If Congress approves the remaining $101 billion for 2008, this will bring the seven-year total for the war to $752 billion. As can be seen from the chart, while these numbers have contributed to the deficits for the past seven years (just like all other forms of spending have contributed to the deficits), they were clearly not the difference between a deficit and surplus situation for the time period.”
If you have a chance, we would be interested to know how you would propose to restructure the federal budget to solve the oncoming problems that are discussed in the Chart Presentation. Presumably, you would cut military spending…by how much? Would you borrow more money to pay for the deficits that will still be present? Would you tax the wealthy to pay for everything? Would you cut other Discretionary programs?