Where the debt came from? Hint: the deficits

While the Democratic Convention is raging in North Carolina, Republicans and Fox News are sure to be talking about the federal debt surpassing $16T for the first time ever.

The big question will be where did the debt come from and how did it get so big?  The simple answer is it came from annual budget deficits.  Since 1980 the American government has run a budget deficit in 29 of its 33 budgets.  Those deficits (all 29 of them) are added to the federal debt where the government merely pays interest payments to keep everything afloat.  Financing that debt has become a huge chunk of the budget itself.  For a visual, this is what created $16T of debt.

That's a whole lot of unbalanced budgets.  As you can see, the budget deficits are finally starting to shrink.  So why the huge surge in the latter years of the chart?  As you'll recall, in 2007 the United States entered into the worst recession since the 1930s.  The recession led to millions of job losses causing tax revenue to plunge.  In addition, jobless benefits increased and spending on social programs increased to help everyday Americans cope with recession.  These benefits were merely designed to keep people from becoming destitute while the economy was in shambles.  It worked.

During the economic crash of the 1930s, there were no automatic social programs that kicked in to help Americans who lost their jobs as a result of the bad economy.  This led to a depression.  Today, thanks to lessons learned from that Depression, there were kickers in place that helped people from losing everything they owned and these programs no doubt prevented another Depression.  Though not easy, the Middle Class was greatly held intact due to the social programs.

Naturally, the result of such programs increases federal spending.  It did what it was designed to do.  More importantly, the federal safety net prevented a Depression.  But the increase in spending versus the large drop in revenue is what is causing all the rage.

The increase in federal spending is far smaller than the Depression and chaos that would have ensued absent the spending. 

Yet we're getting off track here.  The federal debt is a result of our annual deficits.  The last four years due to a huge economic recession that would have been there no matter who was in charge.  So what about the other 26 budgets with deficits?  Well, those don't matter.  20 of those 26 were from Republicans.  And we all know "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."  It's almost like we can just write off those 20 budget deficits and simply focus on the 6 that do matter.  You know the 6 handed to the Democrats from past Republican administrations.

*Update:

So as there is to be no doubt that the closing paragraph above is more than just some comic relief, one mustn't look any further than last week's Republican Convention to see, all jokes aside, Republicans really do not care about past deficits or about recent economic history.  All they want the American people to do is focus on the right now and the fact that we have really huge budget deficits causing us to accumulate really huge amounts of debt and that Obama is in charge.

During his Convention Speech, NJ Gov. Chris Christie speaking about America's finances: "For make no mistake, the problems are too big to let the American people lose - the slowest economic recovery in decades,  a spiraling out of control deficit,  an education system that's failing to compete in the world.   It doesn't matter how we got here."

Paul Ryan, the very next day at the Convention:  "The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it..."

Asking Americans to forget the past; asking Americans to forget just how we got in the economic shape we are in is exactly what the GOP hopes to accomplish.  In doing so, they successfully delete their contributions to the debt they now claim to care so much about.  Whatever we do as Americans, never remember that Reagan and George H.W. Bush ran 12 consecutive budget deficits or that George Bush turned over to his successor a $1.5T deficit-- the largest in human history-- No none of that matters.  It doesn't matter how we got here.  It doesn't matter Obama inherited the worst financial crisis since 1932.  All that matters is everything is a royal pile of shit and Democrats are in charge.  

** Late Update:

Looks like www.usgovernmentspending.com is down for the moment so the graph above isn't working.  I'll try to figure something out soon.