Quote:U.S. Public Debt
https://www.quora.com/Who-created-more-debt-%...h-or-Obama
Who created more debt presumes that debt is bad in this question. And so the rest of the answers seem to take this presumption and show how to explain how to allocate blame. But much more important that the accounting of debt that is made in the other answers is to understand how to account for asset creation.
For example, a mortgage is a form of debt for the borrower. That debt creates certain liabilities, but also equity. So if a person buys an overpriced house at $250,000 and has to pay it back with interest and then the house loses value and the person is "upside-down."
Compare that to a person that buys a house for $250,000 that is worth more or is fixed up by that person, and in addition the house gains value. In both cases the debt may appear to be equal. But that would be to ignore equity and other values.
So lets look at the value of what was purchased with the debt. Putting aside those things which did not change much like Social Security and some general costs, let us look some big ticket items for Bush:
•Massive tax cuts, mainly for the wealthy. That meant that the debt, aka bonds, had to be sold mainly to wealthy investors to raise the revenue to pay for the tax cuts. This had the effect of reducing the assets of the country and not increasing economic growth probably understanding this is hard to prove.
• Medicare Part D, which created massive debts. This probably increased the overall economy and improved society for the portion that paid prior to the donut hole, and much less for after this. This debt probably increased assets.
•The additional costs of the war. This is a tough call in term of the assets as one has to judge whether it was in defense of the country or a mistake. I personally think it was a huge mistake and was a loss of lives and treasure.
•TARP. This "bailout" package is more properly share with Obama. But if you put it on the Bush side of the ledger, this actually was a loan package and probably was paid back in terms of dollars and many times over in terms of economic activity.
For Obama:
•I would give some credit to Obama for administration of TARP, including it being redrafted to be more than 3 pages and have stronger pay back provisions and oversight.
•ARRA or the Recovery Act, which was spent on tax cuts that were better balanced which meant that the middle class had to spend the money immediately which greatly increased economic activity. And all of the money spent on infrastructure paid off, probably in multiples.
•ACA, aka Obamacare.
This actually reduces debt levels by offsets with revenue for any increased spending. And in terms of massive investments of ARRA and the ACA in moving to electronic medical records and other efficiency and quality of care improvements, the tens of thousands lives saved, and reduced inflation has been one of the biggest economic drivers. Just the massive increase in health care jobs to provide better care for everyone is resulting in keeping the economy on a steady pace.
So, no matter how you divide the debt created, the asset creation, like overall GDP growth, etc, the result is that Obama greatly created value and Bush greatly reduced value for any dollars spent
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