There are actually several problems here:
1. Many of the numbers cited above are wrong or incomplete - www.us-debt-clock.com - U.S. National Debt by President, from 1897 **

2. The basic principle of statistical comparisons: percentages, not absolute numbers, are the lifeblood, sine qua non of economics and business math.

The problems include, and are compounded, by not accounting for growth in the size of the economy and the accumulated debt, and not understanding that same percentage from larger number results in larger number hence the emphasis on the absolute numbers is wrong:

1 + 1 = 2 (+100%)
2 + 1 = 3 (+50%)
3 + 1 = 4 (+33.33%)
4 + 1 = 5 (+25%)
5 + 1 = 6 (+20%) ...

Same number added, but it represents a lower percentage as (accumulated) total gets larger.

It's the same problem that I was warning about since 2020: "Recessions come and go, inflations accumulate", but usually the party in power would rather stave off recession by Keynesian spending "emergency" $$ to "stimulate" the economy than risk natural business cycle recession.

So, expressing and comparing the debt created during one period with the one in another period should be in percentages, not absolute numbers, or as they call it in UK, "like-to-like" or "like-for-like" stats.

There are also other issues / "problems" in this specific example of budgets, e.g., the expense of paying interest for previously ACCUMULATED debt contributes / compounds to the total budget (deficit), so there is also a question of which factors and ratios (in %%) are much more interesting and relevant than a "term debt to total debt", like "deficit to budget", "collection to spending", "increase in debt to nominal GDP/economy", etc., etc.


And, of course, the ever-present yet usually ignored question of who controlled the Congress (solid-Red, solid-Blue, mixed) at the time of accumulating debt, because it's so much easier and convenient to blame a single person, President (and, correspondingly, single party) during the period, as well as different economic conditions and challenges "under President XYZ" at the time - which may have been created as result of laws or regulations set in place by Presidents, Congresses and courts many years before - and the tendency of all Presidents to propose (and Congress approve, after adorning that "Christmas tree" with their own state/district goodies) "record spending programs" with catchy names / acronyms / slogans on this or that "infrastructure" / "re-shoring/onshoring" / "many good-paying [union] jobs" / "education" etc., that many people like in theory, but usually fall far from desired results for economy as a whole and cost much more than initially expected.

That also explains why OMB and CBO projections of deficits are most always wrong, they don't reflect reality and are useless.


** Presidents share fiscal authority with Congress, and totals are affected by inherited budgets, recessions, wars, emergencies, tax policy, and interest costs. Results should be read as administration-period comparisons, not causal scores.
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