A comprehensive national debt clock can be found here:

http://usdebtclock.org/

Pretty interesting to watch the economy go into insolvency in real time.

thats why we chinese rule :D jk.

The only recent president who did anything about this was Clinton.

Obama will not have the pleasure of addressing it with the recession and all.

Heres the national debt figures for each year under clinton. Again those pesky facts, it went up every year.


09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38

And that's because of that pesky fact of life called 'interest on the debt'. Name a Republican president who presided over federal budgets that boasted more in revenues than in expenditures.

Reagan tripled it and Bush Jr. just about doubled it. So to say Clinton did nothing or was as bad as Reagan or Bush Jr. is intellectually dishonest, especially since Clinton's watch had to deal with higher interest rates on the debt.

And let's not forget Bush Jr.'s big claim to 2000 election year fame-- making sure there was no budget surplus.

-Kerry O.

Kerry they all are putting us in debt. I was just challenging the statement that clinton was great for the debt. Republican and democrat are just the fascist and socialist arms of the same globalist death monster of the corporate oligarchy.

I don't disagree, but some are worse than others. And deregulation has done more to kill off meritocracy than taxation, yet that's what gets all the attention.

I guess I just don't understand the fetish many people have about not having to pay any taxes. There's no such thing as a free lunch, but that doesn't mean you have to eat at the most expensive place in town into perpetuity. That's what I see this all-fired rush to shove American exceptionalism in the world's face as being.

-Kerry O.

Brief explanation about why taxes are wrong-they assume the State can control another person's property (money), when they have to moral or legal right to do so. Not to mention, unapportioned direct taxes are unconstitutional- Article I, section 2, US Constitution.

fuzzy math funny.

That, and they save more, and they are more laissez-faire.

What you call deregulation is usually less regulation or different regulation.

Americans dont have a fetish about not paying taxes. Its about not paying excessive taxes. Free lunch? If you are making analogies here the proper one would be you sit down at a barbeque restaurant and get offered a 500 dollar kobe steak or a thousand dollar rare asian fish. Upon complaining you dont want either and cannot afford either they pick one and bring it to you and have you jailed and/or take your house for not paying the bill.

Then they smile and ask "what is your problem? why do you have such a problem paying restaurant bills?"

We dont mind taxes for the few small functions of government. What we dont want is a progressive income tax system ripped from the pages of the communist manifesto. We also dont want the government to invent endless new departments and force us to fund them.

The debt will not be paid .
They just keep on paying the interest on the debt .
The deficit becomes the norm nowadays .

woah, wait a minute... did i miss a memo or something here? are you inferring they they are more laissez-faire as an internal economy or making a statement how we are becoming more hands-on as they become more hands-off?

Incorrect. Andrew Jackson was the only one that managed to balance the budget.

First step he took was to abolish the 2nd National Bank. Then, he was the only president to completely pay off our national debt.

Clinton ?...try a Republican congress...Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution says...

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States...

Arrogance on the part of any country or people, it has a way of backfiring. Our dealings with China has brought a lot of prosperity to China, you won't find me putting that down. But we can't fight arrogance with more arrogance even if I intellectually understand your comment.

Welcome, newgirl.
I hope you have a safe and fun stay with us here in the US.

Eh, i honestly don't think congress had our best interests at heart during that time either. The administration, and the congress, decided it would be a good idea to take money from things like Social security and medicare, and simply not pay their national debt payments, to "balance the budget".

Spending still increased 35% Under the Clinton administration, despite the republican congress.

AND it increased yet again, under Bush jr, by 45%. That's with a republican in office, AND in congress.

There are VERY few democrats and republicans left. Only republicrats.

First, your analogy is patently absurd. Because you live in a society where everyone owns a piece of your hypothetical restaurant, you do have some veto power and you have the courts.

I find it curious that you chose a business to use act as the heavy in your analogy. So often people say 'The government should run exactly like a business'. Well, what happens every time a business gets its most craven wish, to be a monopoly that has a corner on the market? Luckily, the blueprint of our political institutions have circuit breakers and check valves built in to keep any one man from becoming CEO for life.

I have a better deal on analogies today, free to the first 300 million customers-- your government is more like a fulcrum than a restaurant run by shakedown artists. Your participation is your leverage that allows you to live in a society where the trains run on time, criminals are segregated. But fulcrums work on the principle of Mechanical Advantage, so you don't get something for nothing. There is still a price to pay for keeping those trains running on time-- it's just applied more efficiently than you could do on your own without the leverage.

I can tell already you're not convinced (how prescient of me, huh?:)-- well I have an even better deal for ya. Pull up tent stakes and move to Somalia. They don't have taxes there because they don't have no steekin' government.

What? It doesn't sound so wonderful? Well, yes, there is that thing about your having to give up your present vocation because I doubt the power plants there consist of more than bicycle-powered generators, but at least you wouldn't have the IRS poking a gun in your face.


-Kerry O.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
-Thomas Jefferson

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
-Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
-Thomas Jefferson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
-Thomas Jefferson

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
-Thomas Paine


I Think what we were supposed to take away from our forefathers was that government is necesssary to some degree. Not every law passed is bad. But we should be mindful not to let it grow too much, or take too much control over our lives. In order to prevent this, we should not look for the government to "take care of us", but instead, we should take care of eachother.

Taxes are not all bad, but when you add up all our taxes, Medicare, social security, federal income tax, gasoline tax, inflation tax, sales tax, property taxes, vehicle registrations, state income tax, building permits, etc, the average american pays more than 50% of his income in taxes. This means, we put most of our labor into supporting a system to take care of us. This is where our problems come from. Not necessarily from taxes, or laws, but from the princible of taking most of our money, just to have a central power pass blanket policies to redistribute it as they see fit. This is our flaw.

Federal government has no business in healthcare, education, etc. These are designed for more localized sources of power. Nor should our government be responsible for for the well being of every other nation in the world. We have troops deployed in 130 countries in the world today, and we wonder why we are going bankrupt.