Data on the debt

While I no longer believe that "data" matters to the ongoing debt debate fiasco in Washington, I do still hope the facts actually matter to some.  Menzie Chinn over at the blog Econbrowser (see here) has a nice graph showing some history of the national debt (publicly held as a fraction of GDP).

As the graph shows, the fraction began its steep rise in 2008.  An article in the New York Times (see here) shows how this has happened.  The following graph is very instructive.

I understand that it is time to stop the "blame game," but that is unlikely to happen until people are willing to face the facts, accept that both parties have been unwilling to address long-term spending restraint, and recognize that compromise (yes, that dirty word these days) is the only way to begin to effectively make real changes.  The United States has both a spending and a revenue problem.  Both must be addressed.

If you are interested in a short description of how we came to this point, I suggest the essay today by Felix Salmon (see here).  Mr. Salmon succinctly describes the path we have been on for four decades regarding the debt limit.  He says:

The lion’s share of the blame here belongs with the Republicans in general, the House Republicans in particular, and the Tea Party caucus within the House Republicans most of all. But it’s not like these people’s existence or intransigence was any great secret. And so the White House tactics over the course of the past few months look dangerously naive.

As I have said before, we need some adults in Washington (and both parties, nationally and locally) willing to face the facts and focus on real changes.  By "adults" I mean people who don't look at the data and then pretend it doesn't exist.  I'm still waiting...