On Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:34:06 GMT, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

In article ,
Don Homuth wrote:

Strangely enough, even by being in control for Less time than the Ds,
the Rs have done more spending and run up higher deficits than all the
D totals thus far.

That's the Fact, jack!

Cite. My cite (the Statistical Abstract of the US) doesn't agree
with that. (Even inflation adjusted.

There are several ways to look at it:

* Absolute numbers
* Adjusted for inflation
* Percentge of GDP

You like the % of GDP discussion, so I'll give you information that
focuses on it that way.

I'll give you several URLs and you can look at a combination:


http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

"...Despite his professed abhorrence for debt, Reagan instituted
unprecedented peacetime deficit spending...."

The Truman years were a residual of the debt run up for WW2.

"...Was it Reagan or the Democratic Congress?

Some say the debt’s U-turn when Reagan arrived had nothing to do with
his tax cuts, but was caused by Congressional Democrats. Not true. Had
Reagan’s proposed budgets come true, the increased debt would have
increased 85% as much as it actually did (in nominal dollars), but
even this is deceptive. It was not Congress that caused that last 15%;
it was the fact that the economy performed less well than predicted in
the Reagan budgets. This caused more government spending on
unemployment insurance etc. and less tax revenue. In fact a study by
the House found that Reagan asked for $29.4 billion more in spending
than Congress passed.

Whose National-Debt Numbers?

The data plotted here were taken directly from the White House web
site and plotted without modification. For details, see (Source). ..."

http://zfacts.com/p/480.html

This one discusses debt amassed by Presidents.

"...For each term in office, the President is responsible for four
fiscal year budgets starting Oct. 1 of the year they take office and
ending Sept. 30, eight months after they leave office. Table 7.1 gives
the gross federal debt as a % of GDP at the end of every fiscal year
since 1940. Each President's federal debt contribution was computed
by simply subtracting the value at the start of his first FY from the
value at the end of his last FY.

All Presidents prior to Reagan contributed to paying off the huge WWII
debt. The graph also credits the drop in federal debt as a percent of
GDP under Clinton towards repayment of the remaining WWII debt and not
towards paying off the Reagan-Bush debt. That would simply hide their
impact by making it appear that more of the current federal debt was
left over from WWII. Had Reagan-Bush simply managed to break even, the
WWII debt would have been as low as it's shown to be...."

"...From the White House: The Reagan-Bush Debt Explained

"The traditional pattern of running large deficits only in times of
war or economic downturns was broken during much of the 1980s. In 1982
[Reagan's first budget year], partly in response to a recession, large
tax cuts were enacted. However, these were accompanied by substantial
increases in defense spending. Although reductions were made to
nondefense spending, they were not sufficient to offset the impact on
the deficit. As a result, deficits averaging $206 billion were
incurred between 1983 and 1992. These unprecedented peacetime deficits
increased debt held by the public from $789 billion in 1981 to $3.0
trillion (48.1% of GDP) in 1992." [emphasis added]

From "Historical Tables, Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year
2006." Downloaded from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...6/pdf/hist.pdf. Page 5."

Of special interest is the last link on this site, which is a pdf file
worth a read:

http://zfacts.com/p/gross-national-debt.html

"...President Reagan came to power claiming the trillion-dollar
national debt was the country's central problem. He then proceeded to
double it...."

I commend to you a detailed study of it.

There it is, stated as you prefer it in %GDP format.