Fifteen years ago, when the Barack Obama-Joe Biden ticket first got elected, America's three highest federal deficits on record, in inflation-adjusted dollars, were all from World War II. Since then annual deficits have surpassed World War II levels an amazing 12 times, bumping wartime deficits down to 13th, 14th, and 15th in the record books.
In 2020-under President Donald Trump, a Democratic House, and a Republican Senate-the nation's inflation-adjusted deficit more than quadrupled any deficit during World War II. In fact, the 2020 deficit was higher than the combined deficits across all four years of World War II. In 2020, for every $10 in tax revenue that came in, $19 in spending went out.
The Congressional Budget Office says that without that judicial decision, the 2023 deficit would be several hundred billion dollars higher, which would vault it to third on the list of highest real deficits.
Even if one assumes that deficits should rise as the population rises, recent deficits are a thing to behold.
The American Main Street Initiative has published a chart showing the 20 worst deficits on record, along with the president in office at that time, based on tallies from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the CBO. To put recent deficits into further context, the average inflation-adjusted deficit from the end of World War II through the 1970s was less than one-tenth as high as the average World War II deficit.
In 2023 the federal government collected six times as much tax revenue as it did in 1945-yet it still managed to rack up more than twice the deficit.
From the time that Medicare and Medicaid spending first visibly hit the books through 2020, the federal government spent a combined $17.8 trillion on those two programs, while combined federal deficits over that same span amounted to $17.9 trillion.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/americas-endless-federal-deficits
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