Politics
National Debt by President: LBJ to Obama
Correction: The original version of this article contained incorrect data for "days in office" that resulted in an error in the compound annual growth rate of the national debt during "partial term" presidencies. The figures have been corrected.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- As Americans prepared to ring in the new year, their government was ringing up its largest national debt in history. On Dec. 31, 2010, the U.S. public debt passed $14,000,000,000,000 (that's $14 trillion).Since 1964, the U.S. debt had accelerated fastest under President Ronald Reagan, at an annualized growth rate of 14.18% -- a record held until Jan. 20, 2009. Following the inauguration of President Obama, the national debt has grown at an annualized rate of 15.21% -- a statistic that might give Democratic leadership pause ahead of an imminent debt-ceiling vote. The following pages contain the annualized growth rate of the national debt under Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson.
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