Says Barack Obama has “the worst record of any president when it comes to putting America deeper in debt.”
— Reince Priebus in a speech Tuesday
Public concern about America’s debt load tends to wax and wane, but it never really goes away.
Recently, Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, brought up the national debt again, right around the time the broadest measure of national debt broke through the $18 trillion barrier for the first time.
Priebus said President Barack Obama has “the worst record of any president when it comes to putting America deeper in debt,” according to an account in The Hill newspaper.
We wondered how accurate it was for Priebus to describe Obama as having “the worst record of any president when it comes to putting America deeper in debt.” (While the Obama administration has touted its success in helping shrink the annual federal deficit, Priebus was clearly referencing debt, not the deficit, even though the two are obviously related.)
When we checked with the RNC, spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said the gross federal debt — the amount of debt held by the public plus the amount of debt held by government entities — had risen from $10.6 trillion to about $18 trillion during Obama’s time in office, making it the largest increase in raw dollars during any presidency.
Meanwhile, she added, the subset of debt that’s held by the public has more than doubled under Obama.
When we looked into these numbers, they checked out. But, given the snowballing effect of inflation and debt accumulation, it’s not surprising that the most recent president — Republican or Democrat — would experience the biggest increases in raw dollars of debt. So we looked at two other measurements that give a better sense of context for how much the debt climbed under Obama.
We used the Treasury Department’s daily database of federal debt, called Debt to the Penny, for data going back to 1993. For earlier presidencies, we used historical data from the Office of Management and Budget.
We decided to use the broader measure of gross debt rather than the narrower measure of public debt — even though both are valid measures of debt — because for the past three presidents, data on gross debt is more consistently accessible. Meanwhile, to limit the impact of irregular presidential tenures, we looked at nine presidential periods of either four or eight years each: Eisenhower; Kennedy and Johnson combined; Nixon and Ford combined; Carter; Reagan; George H.W. Bush; Clinton; George W. Bush; and Obama.
The first measure we looked at was growth in debt as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP. Experts say this is an important yardstick because it gives a sense of how burdensome the debt is on the economy. Smaller economies can sustain smaller debt loads; bigger ones can tolerate bigger debt loads.
Using this measure, Priebus has a point. The Obama years rank first — that is to say, worst — among the nine presidential tenures when measured by the increase in debt as a share of GDP.
At the end of fiscal 2008, around the time Obama took office, gross federal debt accounted for 67.7 percent of GDP. The estimate for fiscal 2014 is 103.2 percent. That’s a 35.5 percentage-point increase over six years — far higher than any prior presidency we examined.
We looked at how much the gross debt grew from Day One of the presidency to the end of that presidency, then adjusted for the length of time in office. On this list, the debt under Obama grew at the third-fastest pace — and, awkwardly for Priebus, the two presidents under whom debt grew faster were both Republicans.
Reagan saw the biggest percentage increase in debt on his watch, at about 23 percent per year, followed by George H.W. Bush at about 13 percent per year and Obama at 11.5 percent per year. Those who saw slower debt growth than Obama were Carter (an increase of 11 percent a year), George W. Bush (10.8 percent a year), Nixon and Ford (8.8 percent a year), Clinton (4.6 percent per year), Kennedy and Johnson (3.3 percent per year), and Eisenhower (1.5 percent per year).
So, whether Obama ranks as “the worst” at debt accumulation depends on how you measure it.
Who gets the blame?
Presidents do have an impact on the debt accrued during their tenure, but that impact is not all-encompassing.
In addition, debt tends to rise particularly quickly during recessions — and Obama came into office with a doozy of a recession underway. In the debt-per-GDP measure, Obama was hit coming and going, since the numerator (debt) rose even as the denominator (GDP) fell during the recession.
“Certainly the Great Recession had a big impact” on debt accumulation under Obama, said Steve Ellis, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. The recession, he said, meant both higher spending (on programs to aid the newly jobless and financially struggling), but also a loss in tax revenue (as once-employed Americans stopped earning wages they would have to pay taxes on). In addition, the baby boomer generation retired in increasing numbers under Obama, meaning both higher spending and less tax revenue.
“So it’s a mixed bag,” Ellis said, “and all presidents are a bit trapped by their time.”
This suggests that Obama bears some responsibility for the rise in debt, but hardly all.
Our ruling
Priebus said Obama has “the worst record of any president when it comes to putting America deeper in debt.”
On Obama’s watch, debt as a share of GDP rose far faster than it did during any prior presidency. But if you look at the current amount of debt compared with where he started, the rise was not as fast as it was under Reagan and the elder Bush, two Republican predecessors.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True.
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