America’s Presidents: Who was the biggest spendthrift?

 

I looked back over the past 50 years at the debt issues that faced the last 10 administrations.  For my source material, I took data from the Treasury Direct website (a virtual goldmine of information) and used their very handy monthly search function to examine the debt history for the years and months in question.  To ensure that you understand how I used the numbers, for example, for the beginning of President Nixon’s term as the Big Guy, I took the debt recorded on January 31st, 1969 as linked here.  Since there is not a daily breakdown that gives us an accurate debt figure for January 20th, 1969, the debt at the end of President Johnson’s term was assumed to be the debt figure recorded for January 31st, 1969 just as it was assumed to be the debt figure for the beginning of President Nixon’s term.  Where Presidents did not finish their terms (i.e. JFK), I used the debt to the end of November 1963 as his final debt number as I did in the case of Nixon.

 

Here’s the chart, in chronological order, with the debt at the beginning of each President’s term, the amount in dollars by which the debt grew, the total percentage, the length of the President’s term (in years and months expressed as a decimal) and the compound annual growth rate of the debt as a percentage for each year of that particular President’s term:

 

I realize that the compound annual growth rate (here’s a definition of CAGR for those who care) is a rather odd number to use and that it may not be to everyone’s liking, but I found that it was most interesting to see just how much debt grew as a percentage of itself for each year that the last 10 Presidents resided in the White House.

 

Here’s a summary of my findings in order by compound annual debt increase from least to greatest:

 

The lowest overall annual percentage increase in the debt award goes to President Kennedy.  During his tenure, the debt grew by only 2.24 percent annually despite the fact that there was ongoing tensions and military buildup related to both the Cold War and Vietnam as well as the ramping up of the American space program.  The same might be said for President Johnson who comes in second with an increase of only 3.17 percent per year over his five year term as President.  Surprisingly enough, the worst President for building up the debt was the much venerated President Ronald Reagan considering that the Cold War buildup ended under his tenure.  In fact, I was so surprised that I went back and triple checked the numbers and my calculations because the debt growth was so out of line with the other Administrations in this study.  Under the Reagan Administration, the debt rose a massive 188 percent or 14.18 percent on an annual basis, far worse than either the Bush I, Bush II or Obama Administrations.  I was rather surprised to note that, in comparison, Presidents Bush I, Ford and Obama added between 11 and 13 percent per year to the debt.  President Bush II, considered by many to be a spendthrift administration because they added a rather massive $4.9 trillion to the debt, actually added only 8.07 percent per year to the federal debt over his eight year term, the second lowest annual increase in the past 35 years and still just over 4.5 percentage points lower than President Obama who is only two and a half years into his first term.

 

I apologize for the brevity of this posting (it took me quite a while to assemble the data and complete the calculations) but I hope that this, for once and for all, answers the question "Which President is responsible for the debt issues facing America today?".  The numbers don’t lie and they don’t play political games, do they?

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