Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is hoping to use his upcoming State of the Union address to nudge the pandemic into the nation’s rear-view mirror. But it could turn into yet another disruptive display of national tensions and frustration over trying to move past COVID-19. The White House has taken extraordinary precautions to keep Biden from getting the virus, including requiring high-quality masks in his vicinity and limiting his travel and participation in large events. A speech to a full House chamber would be by far the densest audience of his presidency to date.

It is almost State of the Union time. So what is the real state of our union's finances, specifically our federal budget?  Are we going to hell in a hand basket?  Or do we have nothing to fear but fear itself?  I crunch the numbers so you don't have to. For fair comparisons over time, I provide numbers as a percentage of our economy, specifically Gross Domestic Product. The Past.  Let's start with what we know: the past.  Below is a breakdown for federal spending in 2007, as a percent of GDP, in which total outlays were exactly 20% of GDP...