The 2012 National Debt Road Trip

As the National Debt continues to grow the most common defense of President Obama I hear is: "George Bush went nuts on deficit spending, Obama's deficits are no worse than that." Federal deficits and debt deal with so much money it's often hard to get the scale of it all. I like to look at the National Debt as a sort of road trip. I did this in 2009 but I only had President Obama's projections to work with. Now, 3 years later, lets see how things actually played out. We'll start in Long Beach California and say that every mile we travel away from the west coast is equal to 5.8 billion dollars. We'll call every year an hour that way we can convert the amount of debt that has increased in a way we're all familiar with: miles per hour. We'll adjust all the numbers for inflation and, for the sake of brevity, we'll start in 1981. At this point the debt is $2.3 trillion, which means we're across California and just south of Phoenix. During the 8 years President Reagan is in office we go about 55 miles per hour, through Arizona, across New Mexico and just into West Texas. During George H W Bush's 4 years we speed up to 74 miles per hour taking us into the middle of nowhere Texas. Which is where we stay for most of President Clinton's term. A combination of fantastic economic performance and slow budget growth mean we've slowed down to about 18 miles per hour ending up about 100 miles outside of San Antonio which continues to be the middle of freaking nowhere. But when President Bush comes into office, the economy slows down and we see some tax cuts which means lower revenue, even as spending accelerates. This means Bush was clipping along at nearly 82 miles per hour, speeding through Texas, Louisiana and into Gulfport, Mississippi. Presidential candidate Barack Obama called this debt "irresponsible, unpatriotic" and "a sign of leadership failure" so you can imagine that when he came into office he hit the brakes pretty hard. Unfortunately his foot slipped and he hit the gas instead. As of April 2012 under Obama the debt has increased at an exciting 237 miles per hour, taking us further in 38 months than Bush did in eight years. Some people object to this kind of talk saying: "President Obama inherited a screwed up economy and it doesn't turn on a dime. He had to pass the stimulus to get us out of the hole that Bush dug so the debt increases under Obama are actually Bush's fault. So here's what we'll do: Let's say Obama isn't responsible for anything that happened in the first 38 months of his presidency. But we are going to hold him responsible for the debt starting... now. Well, according to President Obama's own budget estimates, from now until the end of his second term he plans on slowing down to 173 miles per hour, taking us from Miami across the Caribbean past Cuba and Haiti until we are within sight of Puerto Rico. Which I hear is an excellent place to vacation if someone else is paying the bills. CHEAP SHOT! And this is all with a growing economy and some very optimistic revenue estimates. Someone once called President Bush "irresponsible, unpatriotic" and "a leadership failure" for increasing the debt half that fast, but I can't remember who it was.