Data sources for response to the Klein deficit comparison chart
Published in
1 min readFeb 2, 2012
- All numbers measure changes in debt held by the public, the amount the federal government borrows from the rest of the world.
- Bush 43 debt increase over two terms: $2.9 T = $6.307 T — $3.410 T
- $6.307 T = “Debt to the Penny” from Treasury for 20 January 2009.
- Treasury provides “debt to the penny” but doesn’t go back to 2001, so I used OMB’s number for EOY 2000 from their Historical Table 7–1. That reflects the debt as of 31 December 2000, three weeks before the start of the Bush Administration. It errs just a smidge on the side of overstating the Bush debt increase.
- Obama debt increase over a hypothetical two Administrations: $7.8 T = $14.121 T — $6.307 T
- $14.121 T is OMB’s number for debt held by the public at the end of (CY, I think) 2016 under the President’s policies. That’s three weeks before the end of a hypothetical second term, so it errs just a smidge on the side of understating the Obama debt increase.
- $6.307 T is again Treasury’s number for 20 January 2009 (see the third bullet above).
- $0.98 T is from Mr. Klein’s chart. The residual, $6.83 T, is the $7.8 T total debt increase projected by the Obama Administration for the President’s policies over a hypothetical two terms, minus the debt increase that Mr. Klein argues results from policies proposed by President Obama and already enacted into law.
