“You cannot get the water to clear up, until you get the pigs out of the creek!”
[Editor’s note: There are some informal discussions particularly on the numbers presented on the poster. The 4th Media thought it’d be worthwhile to introduce them without mentioning who the authors are.]
Here we go:
First person:
1. The years are wrong. US federal fiscal year starts on 10/1. The FY09 (10/1/2008 to 9/30/2009) budget was on Bush, not Obama.
2. The numbers are wrong. The left side is the net debts, and the right side is the gross debts. If both go by gross debts, the left side (1789 through 2008) should be $10 trillion.
The correct numbers should be $11.9 trillion to the left (1789 through 2009), $5.9 trillion to right (2010 through 2013, est.).
The “picture” is to appeal to a special segment of the American population: …
To me Obama is a crappy president, but had there been another one winning the election in 2008, other than Ron Paul, the overall debts would have unlikely been drastically different.
Yes, the end game won’t be pretty, which is a long story.
Second person:
Some good points. But debt to Obama’s policies are not just accounted for between 2010 – 2013. Many of his programs (healthcare for example) don’t kick in till 2014 – with mounting afterwards. Anyways – the key is to note that debts added this term and all previous terms combined are on the same order of magnitude.
Third person:
Also, weren’t there debt commitment carried over from end of Bush regime that Obama administration had to budget for? Here are a little more data to consider: http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/debt_deficit_brief.php
They may be in “same order of magnitude” for other reasons, such as population increase in 200 years, inflationary adjustment. Similar debt spike occured during the Great Depression and WWII, junk bond bailout in the 80’s, Iraq war since 2001.