The Myth Busting Economist by Larry Malone
Understanding the National Debt
My last column highlighted recent trends in federal budget deficits and busted a couple of big myths about them. The first was that we haven’t always had deficits. We were running a surplus until 2002, when spending during the Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus in 2000 into a $-413 billion deficit in 2004 (a $-649 billion swing). The second was that deficits had recently been shrinking, as they should in a strong economy. But revenue reducing tax cuts that largely benefitted corporations by the Trump Administration took effect in 2018 and added $2.3 trillion to the National Debt.
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