Deficit shrinks by $1 trillion under Obama administration
On Thursday, the Treasury Department released information on the fiscal year 2015 showing that the deficit has shrunk under the Obama administration by $1 trillion.
The Treasury Department released information on the fiscal year 2015 showing that the deficit has shrunk under the Obama administration by $1 trillion.
The new numbers show the lowest point the deficit has reached during the Obama era, reaching the lowest point since 2007 both in terms of hard numbers and as a percentage of the GDP.
The deficit has shrunk to 2.5 percent of the GDP, down from 9.8 percent when Obama took office and below the average of the past half century of deficit spending.
The numbers absolutely fly in the face of what the public believes about the deficit with a Bloomberg Politics Poll last year finding that 73 percent of people believe that the deficit has increased rather than decreased over the past six years.
The year before that, only 6 percent of people were found to have realized that the deficit was shrinking, numbers which help to explain the support enjoyed by movement like the Tea Party, which have gained ground in blaming the president for destroying the economy and increasing the deficit, charges which are not at all supported by the numbers.
The recent information may also help to debunk conservatives’ long-standing claims that the Democratic Party is fiscally irresponsible.
