To the editor:
Revisionist history about the national debt abounds. Here are the facts. As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), it was at its highest in 1943 during World War II at 120 percent. Thanks to a booming economy and prudent fiscal policy it shrank steadily to 29 percent by the end of the Carter administration.
Reagan's defense build-up and huge tax cuts reversed the trend and by the time he left office the debt had tripled and was 65 percent of GDP. You can argue that those policies were justified (I don't) but you can't argue that Reagan reversed a 40-year trend and send the deficit through the roof.
Clinton caught a tail wind with a hot economy and targeted tax increases and brought the deficit down to below 50 percent of GDP. In his last two years, we had a surplus and a hot Bush v. Gore election issue was what to do with the surplus.
Bush won, and here's what he did. He ran two wars to the tune of $1.5 billion a week off the budget for seven years. He gave a huge tax cut, mostly to the top 2 percent of wage earners. The debt quadrupled to over 80 percent of GDP. Again, one could argue that circumstances made him do it, but you can't argue that another Republican president blew the deficit through the roof.
Enter Obama with the financial market in shambles and the country in the throes of the deepest recession since The Great Depression. There's no question that the deficit has continued to increase as he used fiscal policy to revive the economy — it's now close to 90 percent of GDP — and we still have a long way to go. But understand this: The big spenders over the last 30 years have been the Republicans.
Ed Warnshuis
Lawrence
