Make America's deficits great again

[CJD]

(11-15-2019, 12:02 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: You probably already know this, but deficit spending deals with the annual budget while debt deals with the accumulation of annual deficit spending.

For example, this year I spent $10K more than I made, but I’ve already got a debt of $100K. The $10K is my deficit. The $100K is my debt (now $110K because of my latest deficit.)

It’s misleading or at least confusing to compare one to the other across presidents. For a good analysis one should consistently compare debt to debt and deficit to deficit or how deficit spending increased the debt for each president. Plus during the first year of any president’s tenure, the budget and any deficit is from his predecessor.

Yea, the reason I was a bit confused was the website says this:

Quote:The first column represents the fiscal year, followed by the deficit that year in billions. Next is the debt increase by fiscal year, followed by the deficit/GDP. Finally, the events affecting the deficit are cited. 

Deficit by year and debt increase by year sound like the same thing to me, based on your post (and my understanding), so them being different numbers is odd to me. 

The debt itself is nowhere near those numbers, as it is approximately 21 trillion dollars as of 2018. 
https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to-gdp-and-major-events-3306287

So the tweet isn't comparing deficits to debt, it's comparing deficits to annual debt increases, or at least it appears to be.

I just don't know what the difference between an annual deficit and an annual increase of the debt is . I'm sure there's some calculation with variables that are included in one but not the other. I dunno.