Thread by @TheValuesVoter

Okay, so while I'm waiting around for Congress to do its job and raise the #DebtCeiling, hoping that their screwing around doesn't cost me my 401(k), I decided to fact check the GOP talking points.

Here's how we got our huge national debt. Broken out by year and party control.

First of all, here's a refresher on the deficit, the debt and how they relate to one another.

Now let's dig into the numbers.

https://twitter.com/TheValuesVoter/status/1619415870702501888?s=20

There are a lot of numbers and so let's break them apart and look at them by each President.

Let's start with the Clinton years. Life was good. And the deficit fell every single year. And because of that, we didn't have to borrow as much. The National Debt didn't grow much.

Now here are the George W. Bush years. I still to this day love George W. Bush. But math is math. And both the debt and the deficit that causes the debt, grew a lot.

Now here are the Obama years, which started off with the Great Recession. Now here's the funny thing. There were several years in this period in which spending fell. Including in FY10, when the GOP won the House back, in part, by accusing the Democrats of overspending.

Now here comes the businessman, Donald Trump. And during his term, the deficit rose for four years in a row. And for three of these four years, there was no recession and no COVID. It was just spending increasingly more than we took in.

I don't hear this in GOP talking points.

And here is the incumbent President, Joe Biden, for the two Fiscal years completed during his term so far.

Spending actually fell during the last Fiscal Year. And the deficit fell two Fiscal Years in a row.

Don't yell at me. These are the numbers. Look them up.

Here's how every President since 1997 started and ended their terms with regard to the National Debt. (They don't have records that go back to the actual day of Clinton's first inauguration and so I start at his second term in 1997).

So let's go back to the big picture here. The last 30 years. All the spending, earning and borrowing we've done across the various political party combinations in charge of government over the years.

And compare it to the talking points.

During this time period, the deficit grew 12 times.

The Republicans controlled the House during 8 of those times. Only 2 of those 8 times coincided with a recession.

The Democrats controlled the House during 4 of those times. 3 of those 4 times coincided with a recession.

Which goes to another point. Which is weird and one heck of a coincidence. But true.

On several occasions, The Democrats have come to power in the aftermath of a recession.

And a strange percentage of the recessions we've had after WWII have occurred during GOP Presidencies.

Somebody posted something like this and I couldn't believe it. But it's actually true. Almost all of the recessions we've had since World War II have begun under Republican Presidencies.

There's probably not a reason for it. But it's a bad coincidence.

So, anyway, when you look at the numbers instead of listening to the politicians, you get a different understanding of why we are where we are than just the narrative that one party spends and the other doesn't. Or that Biden blew up the debt. That's just not true.

Believe it or not, I've got more but I'll save it for later.

The stress of worrying about the economy needlessly blowing up combined with the lies from some of our elected leaders got me motivated to crunch some numbers.

More later.