[HiTech RedNeck]

Wouldn’t it be crazy rad if, after one giant hiccup, the picture started reversing under Donald Trump???

[DoodleDawg]

We’ll see how President Trump does.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

No matter how you slice it, Obastard has to be the very worst. Especially after promising MANY times to balance the budget and shrink the debt on his watch.

[yuleeyahoo]

So according to this methodology Reagan, 168% increase; is the third worst president in history behind F.D.R., 1048% incease; & Wilson, 727% increase; for physcal responsibility.

This also makes Coolidge the best with a 26% decrease in the National debt.

[ZOOKER]

What if there is no budget passed?

I recall one of Obama's budgets that actually got NO votes in Congress.

In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Obama sail through both terms Budget-Free?

[ichabod1]

Just deem it. Deem it so.

[DoughtyOne]

Lost me at, “Obama’s budget included increased defense spending to between $700 billion and $800 billion a year.”

Not sure what he was spending it on unless it was retrofitting bathrooms, paying for leotards, and panty-waste awareness meetings.

The business end of the military sure wasn’t getting it.

Oh, perhaps arming al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and ISIS cost more than I realized.

[aimhigh]

The problem with the article is that presidential budgets are always dead on submission. This needs to be written from the perspective of who is in power in congress.

[Drago]

Gonna be hard to beat Calvin Coolidge...Mr. Trump would have to do a $1 trillion cut to the budget to go from a $500+ billion budget deficit to a $867 billion budget surplus. A $1 trillion cut would be about a 28.5% budget cut...not sure if there is even 28% in “discretionary” spending in the current budget?

[minnesota_bound]

I believe all these trillions were spent covering the bad bank and wall street investments. Virtual money that cost real people their jobs, homes, savings by the millions except the bankers and wall street traders. Hopefully more bankers and traders will jump off buildings or be killed off in mysterious ways.

[ridesthemiles]

I am pretty sure that Obama did NOT submit a budget every year. We have had more than one year of ‘Continuing Resolutions’ because of NO BUDGET from the President.

I don’t think he even knows how to do a budget.

[Robert DeLong]

As economist J.W. Mason has shown, Reagan did not increase the national debt.During the Reagan years, the growth in the national debt was due to the high interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve (in my opinion in the Establishment’s attempt to wreck the Reagan program). Mason shows that it was the Fed-imposed increase in interest rates on the debt that raised the national debt.

The standard historical narrative about President Ronald Reagan's budgets goes like this: He slashed taxes for the rich, spent a ton of money on the military, and the national debt exploded.

Now, that is a fair description of his policies. But it turns out Reagan may have gotten a bad rap on the debt charge.

In fact, the major culprit was another, often overlooked player: interest payments. Just why exactly this happened is extremely interesting, and also carries very important lessons for budgetary and monetary policy today. Put short, the conventional wisdom about debt and monetary policy is almost entirely wrong.

So when centrist types argue for austerity or greater interest rates as some kind of self-evident proposition, remember Reagan's bum rap. Remember, too, that the whole point of all this budget and monetary policy is to facilitate the business of human life, and not the other way around.

In contrast, despite the Fed’s accommodation of the Oligarchy’s puppet, Obama, with zero interest rates, holds the record for the greatest increase in US national debt.

Obama added $8 trillion dollars to the national debt...:

One way to measure the debt by President is to sum all his budget deficits.

That's because the President is responsible for his budget priorities. Each year's deficit takes into account budgeted spending and anticipated revenue from proposed tax cuts or hikes.

But there's a difference between the deficit and the debt by President.

That's because all Presidents can employ a sleight of hand to reduce the appearance of the deficit. They can borrow internally from other government sources. For example, the Social Security Trust Fund has run a surplus since 1987. That's because there were more working people contributing via payroll taxes than retired people withdrawing benefits. The Fund invests its surplus in U.S. Treasury notes. The President can reduce the deficit by spending these funds instead of issuing new Treasuries.

* * *

Barack Obama - The national debt grew the most dollar-wise during President Obama's two terms. He added $7.917 trillion, a 68 percent increase, in seven years. Obama's budgets included the economic stimulus package. It added $787 billion by cutting taxes, extending unemployment benefits, and funding job-creating public works projects. The Obama tax cuts added $858 billion to the debt in two years. Obama's budget included increased defense spending to between $700 billion and $800 billion a year.