Website that posts our historical debt

[mello]

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway
You just need to enter a start & finish date.

Here are some figures from that site:

Clinton:
01/20/1993 4,188,092,107,183.60
01/19/2001 5,727,776,738,304.64

GWB:
01/19/2001 5,727,776,738,304.64
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08

Obama:
01/20/2009 - 10,626,877,048,913.08
07/06/2011 - 14,343,021,848,987.23

It looks like Obama is going to beat Bush's total in only a third of the time.

[Zippyjuan]

Not if you go by a percentage increase. Based on the numbers you give, the debt increased by 39% over eight years under Clinton. Bush- 86% increase. Obama (so far) 34%. He still could though. He needs to get it up to around $17 trillion to beat Bush.

We should also bear in mind that spending is determined by the House (which originates all spending bills- not the President who only signs what is passed) and the Republicans are in charge of that now- as they were under Dubya. Other than a couple of years, they have been running the House since 1995. http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm

The largest single year's budget deficit occured in 2009- and that budget was written by a Republican congress and signed by GW Bush. That year $1.8 trillion was added to the deficit and it represented 13.4% of US GDP- which was also the biggest as a percent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt While still quite huge, it has been declining slowly (not fast enough though) since then.