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We survived with our democracy shaky, but still intact. Now lets view our national debt.

What makes up the national debt?

The national debt is comprised of both public debt and intragovernmental debt. Public debt includes Treasury bills, notes and bonds, which are owned by U.S.-based investors, the Federal Reserve and foreign governments.

Intragovernmental debt is made up of Government Account Series securities that are owned by federal agencies, such as military retirement funds, public employee retirement funds and the Social Security Trust Fund.

Each year in which the government spends more than it earns in tax revenues, it runs a deficit for that year, which adds to the national debt total.

Here is a chart of national debt per president which gives a rough picture of what each president did. It is presented with no description of the problems the president faced. The first year of the presidency is really from the previous president. I’ve included several web sites to allow an easy comparison with the chart below.

Debt as a percentage increase rather than a dollar amount is a way of accounting for inflation. The percentage increase per year is used so that 8 year terms are fairly compared to shorter terms.