Posted on 09/09/2004 10:41:10 AM PDT by Cal Gonzalez
I HEARD FRED BARNES ON FOXNEWS SAY THAT THIS DEFICIT IS THE 17TH LARGEST IN HISTORY, WHEN MEASURED IN REAL DOLLARS. I CAN NOT FIND THIS INFO ANYWHERE. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE TO FIND THAT LIST ?
4 MORE YEARS !!!
at this point the entire national at $79K per FAMILY is about 20% of most family's home mortgage, too, to put that in perspective as well. Not that it's desirable but let's keep things in perspective GIVEN ISLAMO-FASCISTS WANT TO KILL US!
Just a hunch, but I'd guess Fred Barnes does.
Why are you shouting?
GRANTED. BUT I AM LOOKING TO SEE WHEN THOSE OTHER 16 DEFICITS WERE IN EFFECT. WHAT PARTY AND/OR PRESIDENT PRESIDED OVER THEM .
SORRY . I WILL TAKE THE CAP'S off
Make that GDP
No, actually, it's the LARGEST when measured in real dollars, and 17th when measured as a fraction of GDP.
You might get a good deal down here in Florida now. However, just about every home is a potential mobile home, considering the weather.
You had to ask. The answers aren't that easy, and auditing Fred Barnes' statement will be difficult and open to partisan interpretaion.
Googled "history of US deficits" using the quotes and got one link to a geocities page.
It's not original source material, but if you can verify it, it lists all deficits from 1924-1998 (author presumably got tired and didn't update after that).
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2897/index254.html
With that, you still need a history of US inflation, which can be found here (I Googled "historical US inflation" using the quotes and got this as first link):
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx
They appear to have inflation data by year going back to 1914.
Finally, there's this little gem of a web page from the Treasury Department, that shows the national debt to the penny:
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm
What's really sad is that the changes in the national debt from year to year don't equal the deficit that occurred each year, due to so-called "off-budget" items. You can verify this by comparing the deficits on the geocities page to the increases in total debt on the Treasury's page.
The nationall debt has almost always increased by more than the reported "deficit" each year because of the "off-budget" bookkeeping chicanery. This is a disgrace that goes back at least as far as the early 60s, if not much earlier.
If I were less busy, I would do the math for you, but you have the raw data to work from, for the most part.
At Google, quote marks are your friends.
And BTW, if Barnes really said or meant as a % of GDP, then you would need that data too. For that, start here:
Bureau of Economic Analysis:
http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn1.htm
Don't know, but I'm guessing that we ran the biggest deficits as a percent during WWII, the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War.
littany thank you.
but the meat and potatoes was found in the article by proverbs.
If the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of $422 billion is correct, this year's deficit to GDP ratio will be 3.6%. That's only the seventh largest since 1985. Again, hardly the stuff of records.
Why is the House of Representatives Majority party a relevant item?
Read the Constitution. All spending bills MUST originate in the House. The House controls spending. If there is a deficit, it's because the House authorized more spending than revenues can cover.
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