71 percent of nat’l debt happened during GOP presidents; 28 percent under Dems

GOP Presidents     Dem Presidents
$9.5 trillion            $3.8 trillion

Total debt is $14.3 trillion.
$1 trillion of debt comes from before Reagan (NYT doesn’t make clear who created that debt).
$13.3 trillion accumulated from Reagan to Obama.

71% of the $13.3 trillion was under GOP presidents.
28% of the $13.3 trillion was under Dem presidents.

(Source: NYT pieced together data from Treasury, OMB, Federal Reserve Bank of NY, and more)

PS And before anyone says “you have to look at who controlled Congress,” I don’t recall the Republicans worrying about that fact when they blamed Obama for the deficit and the national debt.

What’s more, I also don’t recall any Republican presidents vetoing the debt ceiling increase during their tenure.  In fact, many of the biggest causes of the national debt were GOP presidential initiatives, such as:

* Reagan defense budgets and tax cuts
* George HW Bush gulf war
* George W Bush tax cuts, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As for Democratic Presidents, you have Bill Clinton who actually put us in a surplus – which George Bush immediately blew on a… wait for it… tax cut – and Barack Obama who inherited the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression (thus you can’t blame him for that, just as I don’t include the three Bush recessions or the Reagan recession in the early 80s).

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