I am no genius economist, and I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong, but it seems the pathetic BOASTING that some of the leftists do about the yearly deficit “shrinking” over the past seven years is NOT because of decreased government spending “per se” but because of the low interest rates that have been keeping the outlays on that portion of the budget lower....
In other words, the economy has been so bad that interest rates have been kept down—which means the interest payments on our debt (which continues to rise) have not risen as fast as they would in a “normal” economy.
Hope that makes sense.
What is reported is the "official on-budget" deficit. Meaning those expenses the Federal Government chooses to report and track. That number can change by the White House or Congress deciding a certain expenditure is no longer "on budget" and thus any overruns are no longer an issue.
The actual deficit - meaning, what is spent above tax revenue and must be covered by debt - is shown at Treasury Direct, and you can see we're up $1.1 trillion this year, on track to hit another $1.4 trillion by the end of September.
Too many people swallow the media/DC lie that the deficit is just the "on budget" number. In reality, it is all spending above and beyond tax revenue, and that is realized by the national debt from year to year.
Studying the history of the national debt, you'll see the last time we had an actual surplus (did not add to the national debt) was 1957, under Eisenhower. Yes, it's been 60 years since we had a real balanced budget...