The Debt to GDP ratio for the United States government now stands at 150%. We have a GDP of $20 trillion, and a national debt of $30 trillion. This puts our country in the same fiscal territory that Greece was in during its years of punishing austerity.
How did this happen? The truth of the matter is that it is not the current administration's fault, nor the previous one's, nor even the one before that.
To find the true culprit, we must go back 20 years, to the George W Bush era. Bush Jr inherited a balanced budget from his predecessor, and spent the next eight years of his reign not only erasing it, but adding an unprecedented amount to our country's debt, which subsequent administrations have not even come close to either rivaling or repairing.
To begin with, he launched two massive invasions as part of the War on Terror. Our invasion of Afghanistan eventually cost our country $900 billion, while our invasion of Iraq two years later ended up costing us $1.1 trillion.
Simultaneously, George W Bush passed two massive tax cuts. Between the two of them, they added approximately $7 trillion in cumulative deficits over the subsequent two decades of American fiscal policy.
To finish things, during the opening days of the Great Recession in 2008, the Bush administration passed a massive banking sector relief bill, essentially handing $700 billion in free money to the wealthiest Americans. Accounting for money recovered, the final financial toll came out to approximately $500 billion.
So then, adding it all up, the Bush Administration's contribution to the national debt eventually came out to at least $10 trillion, without even accounting for two decades' worth of inflation.
For their part, every president since has done their best to stop the federal government's subsequent hemorrhaging of money. Obama tried to raise taxes and end the Iraq war. Trump tried to end the Afghan war. Biden has tried to reduce America's foreign commitments overseas while investing more in the American economy.
But for those trying to ascribe blame for our country's current abysmal fiscal state, please place that blame squarely where it belongs: at the feet of George W Bush, the most fiscally reckless and financially irresponsible leader our country has ever suffered through.
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