United States - Debt by President - 2019 Edition

Updated February 13, 2019

With the U.S. federal debt passing the $22 trillion mark, I thought that it would be a good time to revisit a posting that I have done several times over the past eight years; an examination of the debt accumulation by each of the administrations that have "ruled" Washington since John F. Kennedy took office on January 20, 1961. 

As I have done in the past, I have sourced the data for this posting from the Treasury Direct website which provides us with a year-by-year and month-by-month update of Washington's debt reality.  For the purposes of this posting, I have used the Treasury's debt figures from the end of the month of January in each president's inauguration year except in the cases of the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Administrations when I have used the debt data from the end of their last month of service (Kennedy and Nixon) and from the end of the first month of service (Johnson).

From the Treasury's data, I have calculated the following:

1.) Nominal increase in the debt during each president's term in office

2.) Percentage increase in the debt during each president's term in office

3.) Compound annual growth rate or CAGR of the debt during each president's term in office

While you may not be familiar with the term compound annual growth rate, it is calculated as follows:

This measure provides us with the compounded average annual growth rate of the debt over all of the years that each president served in office.

Let's start by looking at the growth of the federal debt going back to 1966 (current to July 2018):

You will note that the debt grew at a much faster rate during and after the Great Recession than it did during the decades prior to the event which very nearly caused the global economy to collapse.  Since the Great Recession, the federal debt growth rate has remained at elevated levels despite the "health" of the American economy.

Here is a graph which shows the federal debt as a percentage of GDP:

Thanks to relatively reasonable economic growth levels, the federal debt as a percentage of GDP has stalled at between 100 and 110 percent, however, should the economy suffer a period of negative growth, the federal debt-to-GDP level could see rapid growth as it did during the period between 2008 and 2009 when it rose from 62.8 percent in late 2007 to 93.4 percent at the beginning of 2011.

Now, let's look at the debt on a president-by-president basis.  Here is a graph showing the federal debt at the end of each president's term in office (excluding Donald Trump since he has not served a full term):

It is quite clear that the growth rate of the debt rose significantly during the Reagan Administration and then accelerated even further during the Bush II Administration.

Here is a bar graph which shows the nominal growth in the federal debt for each of the last eleven administrations:

As you can see, the nominal debt grew by the most under the Obama Administration, however, should the debt continue to grow at the same rate that it has grown at for the first two years of the Trump Administration, in nominal terms the debt growth under a two-term Trump Presidency will be the second largest in history.  What is also concerning is that the debt has grown by more than a trillion per year over the past two years during a relatively healthy economic expansion.

Here is a bar graph which shows the percentage increase in the federal debt for each of the last eleven administrations:

By a very wide margin, the percentage growth in the federal debt was the highest under the Reagan Administration when the debt grew by 188.84 percent.  In second place, we find the Obama Administration with debt growth of 87.59 percent and in third place, we find the Bush II Administration with debt growth of 86 percent.  Fortunately, in all three cases, the presidents served for two terms; had the Bush I and Carter Administrations been two-term presidency, it is entirely possible that the overall growth in the federal debt could have surpassed the marks set by the Bush II and Obama Administrations.

Finally, here is a bar graph showing the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of the federal debt under each of the last eleven administrations:

Once again, the Reagan Administration comes in first place followed by the Ford Administration at 12.99 percent and the Bush I Administration at 11.48 percent.

Let's close with one last statistic.  If we take the current federal debt of $22,012,840,891,685.32 and divide it by the 327,167,434 American men, women and children according to the Census Bureau, the per capita share of the debt is:

$67,283

...and, interestingly, given the recent budget impasse in Washington, this is what the Census Bureau website looked like during the partial government shutdown:

One thing that American taxpayers can count on is that, no matter which political party is controlling Washington's finances, nothing will be done to reduce the federal debt or try to live within the debt ceiling of the day, an issue which could prove to be problematic during the next recession.