Full-Sized Graph and Overview

This page provides the detailed calculation of the $12 Republican national debt. To see the full-sized graph and why this makes sense click back to Republican Debt.

Complete Proof of the $12 Trillion Republican Debt

Just below you can see the calculation and the documentation links for the Reagan-Bushes $12 Trillion ($12,049 Billion) national debt as of September 30, 2010. You can download this as an excel spreadsheet by clicking: Download as XLS.

Their debt has 4 parts, but the bulk of it is calculated from 4 inputs (yellow and tan) that you can check with the color coded links to the treasury at the bottom. This will verify the $3.4 Trillion Reagan-Bush debt and the $6.1 Trillion G.W. Bush debt. Together that’s $9.5 Trillion. Now some of G.W. Bush’s debt is really interest on the Reagan-Bush debt, so he is not as bad as he looks, and Reagan-Bush are lot worse because of all their interest. You can see that in the graph above.

Interest is calculated on the second sheet (tab at bottom). But you know that 17 years of compound interest on 3.4 Trillion is going to add a lot. So a $12 Trillion total is very believable, and if you want to spend 10 minutes you can check it easily.

And if you think Congress did it, you better have a look here. Under Reagan and Bush-I, Congress actually made the debt a tiny bit smaller than what both presidents asked for. And G.W. Bush passed his supply-side tax cuts with a Republican Congress. There is just no wiggle room. The Republicans did it.

About the Graph

On the Graph above, the Reagan+Bush debt is the gap between the red line and Clinton’s green line at the bottom. As it shows, if America had not had to pay the Reagan-Bush interest, Clinton’s budget balancing would have nearly paid off the remaining debt from WWII–and we would have been in fabulous shape when the Great Recession struck.