While D.C. and its media hacks continue to play along with the Republican “Debt Crisis!!!” hoax, and pretend that “Obama just needs to lead on the Sequester!!!”, it’s worth remembering the following chart, described on Saturday by WaPo’s Ezra Klein as “The single best chart on the policies driving our deficits”, as recently updated for what they say is the final time…
Any questions?
That’s not fair, Brad. How can GOP obtain the benefits of its paid-for propaganda when you keep pestering people with the facts?
We’ve got “birthers” & “truthers” etc. We need to come up with a term to describe the denialist who make the counter claim that “Bush” isn’t the president anymore so we have to give him a pass and pretend that the person and policies they (GOPers, conservatives and dominionist) forced upon US are irrelevant…
It’s not a question I guess.
The chart has as the right hand measure ‘debt held by the public as a percent of GDP’ which is intended to give the appearance of a decreasing imaginary base line at the bottom.
It’s a horse hockey graph because GDP rises with government spending. You can just spend your way to manipulate this supposed measurement.
The last time any president has ever had a yearly ‘surplus’ when the government actually took in more money than it spent and paid off debt was President Ford.
This also neglects the difference between money owed to banks, money owed to bondholders, money owed to foreign countries, and money owed to our own Treasury which consists of just printing money and inflating our monetary supply. The graph isn’t indexed for the inflation of the monetary supply.
Dave (#2) – How about Amnesiacs?