Timeline for Who was the last US President to oversee a reduction in debt?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 13, 2018 at 8:14 | history | edited | Alexei | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
inlined the link
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| Dec 11, 2012 at 18:41 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 13, 2012 at 21:22 | |||||
| Dec 6, 2012 at 6:23 | comment | added | Aarthi | @LennartRegebro If possible, could you do the conversion? (There's a CPI calculator on the Fed website somewhere.) It would make this answer much stronger if all dollars were represented as being in the same year's terms. | |
| Dec 6, 2012 at 4:12 | history | edited | GDP | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added graph of referenced data
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| Dec 6, 2012 at 0:31 | comment | added | GDP | @LennartRegebro Also, the question has changed since the answer was given, as you'll see with the comments. You can also argue whether any president increased/decreased it if you believe it's Congress alone that determines the budget. | |
| Dec 6, 2012 at 0:29 | comment | added | GDP | These are the numbers on the budget at the time, and I said I guess Carter was the last to see the debt being paid down because until he left office, the amount of the debt had been steadily declining, and beginning in 1980, it has been steadily climbing. As is always the case with numbers, you can slice and dice them to whatever suits your purpose, so I simply supplied the actual balances at the end of each term. If it were as simple as we'd all like to suggest with our answers, there'd be no problems, now would there? | |
| Dec 5, 2012 at 23:26 | comment | added | Lennart Regebro | @Aarthi: No they are not adjusted for inflation. | |
| Dec 5, 2012 at 20:21 | comment | added | Aarthi | Are these numbers adjusted for inflation? | |
| Dec 5, 2012 at 19:50 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Dec 5, 2012 at 19:46 | comment | added | Lennart Regebro | @GDP: Your point being? This answer is inconsistent in it's reasoning and the claim that Carter was the last president to reduce debt is factually incorrect. | |
| Dec 5, 2012 at 18:26 | comment | added | GDP | Well, according to the Department of the Treasury at treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm, the exact debt was $907B | |
| Dec 5, 2012 at 18:25 | history | edited | GDP | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
adjusted starting number
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| Dec 5, 2012 at 7:04 | comment | added | Lennart Regebro | You look at debt in dollars, which is not very relevant. Also, claiming that it was almost payed back in 1980 based on that is incorrect, is was at an historical high in 1980. It was at a low point of you look at debt as a percentage of GDP, but then the last president to pay off debt was Clinton. -1 | |
| Dec 5, 2012 at 1:14 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Dec 5, 2012 at 18:23 | |||||
| Dec 5, 2012 at 0:46 | history | edited | GDP | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 153 characters in body
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| Dec 5, 2012 at 0:31 | comment | added | GDP | True...earlier budgets also had relatively small interest on past debt, whereas the higher the debt became, the bigger it's piece of pie became in the budgets for following Presidents. | |
| Dec 5, 2012 at 0:27 | history | edited | GDP | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added amounts instead of just pcts
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| Dec 4, 2012 at 23:59 | comment | added | Casebash | Just a note to readers. Don't focus too much on the percentages. For example, Bush II increased the debt by 5.7 billion and Obama by 4.3 billion, but Bush's percentage is three times as much because the debt was lower when he started. Additionally, different president had different lengths of term, different economies, different obligations created by past politicians, ect. | |
| Dec 4, 2012 at 23:57 | history | edited | GDP | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 136 characters in body
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| Dec 4, 2012 at 23:46 | history | answered | GDP | CC BY-SA 3.0 |