corporate media will not.

in the last half century, deficits increased under Republican presidents and decreased under Democrats is just a coincidence?

POTUS has tremendous influence over spending and getting budget bills passed. Bush getting us into a war certainly didn't help in his case.

The OP would ignore completely the role of Congress in spending.

The House was in Republican control in Clinton's and Obama's second terms. It was in Democratic control for the end of Bush II and the last half of Trump's first term. Hell, Reagan even had a Democratic House his entire presidency. None of them could spend anything or sign anything into law without Congress passing it first.

I don't believe that Madame Speaker Pelosi, who famously tore up Trump's State of the Union speech, passed Trump's budgets the last two years of his first term because of the tremendous influence he had over her. Do you?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Congressional Republicans are too willing to let TSF control the purse. Note that they were willing to rescind previously approved spending at his whim, thereby increasing my public media donations. Their latest rescission bill shows that they live to cede their authority to the Orange One.

Just like his cabinet members, eh? Most current example: Hegseth, who apparently just elided a little under a billion from a nuclear readiness update program, Sentinel, to fund a classified project. Coincidentally that 934 million was right about the amount I saw some knowledgeable observers estimate it would cost to prepare the "free" plane from Qatar for use an AF1.

Also note: It's unlikely that the conversion to AF1, could be completed before his term expires. The Secret Service (if they didn't want to get spied on) would require a removal of the interior, re-assembly of the plane from the air frame inward, all new electronic systems installation, re-installation of the plan's innards and those shiny gold gee-jaws he likes so much, and of course the testing. This means that it will be ready just about the time it gets donated to the Trump presidential library. Of course that's assuming he actually leaves...

Numbers cited seem off, though.

The national debt is the accumulated debt.

managed to outdo his father, at least when it came to the deficit - $1.54 trillion over $102 billion!

so that his war costs would not be reflected in the debt increase which occured during his administration?

I seem to recall something like that but dont know if it is shown in the 1.54t value.

It's entirely possible. What a debacle that administration was. I often forget as this administration is worse than anything I can imagine.

but do they listen to facts. nope .

All but 1 seem happy and are showing teeth.

Hmm..... I wonder what's that all about.

republicons Bear False Witness -- then claim they are christians. Sure.

...no reputable news outlet should be showing this. For example, in which year of his Presidency did George W. Bush add $1.54 trillion the to the deficit? In which year of his Presidency did Joe Biden decrease the deficit by $954 billion?

The number that really matters is how much was added to the national debt, in current dollars, during any given Presidency.

The numbers come from what the deficit was that each president inherited vs the deficit that each president left for his successor. I eyeballed the math a bit and it looked correct based on https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-federal-governments-budget-deficit-or-surplus/country/united-states/

For example, in 1981, the deficit that Reagan inherited was $79 billion; when he left office in 1989, the deficit was $153 billion, resulting in an increase to the deficit of $74 billion, which is exactly what the OP's graphic shows.

But this is a "you are losing sight of the forest for all the trees" situation, because there is no question that Democratic administrations have been much better stewards when it comes to our national debt than Republican administrations have been for at least the past ~half century or so. Do you -- or anyone else -- doubt that?

...in the first year and last year of administration does nothing more than show you the static information for those two years, but shows nothing about the what was going on with the deficit in the intervening years, nor the overall impact to the national debt, which is the number that has the longest term impact. If Reagan's deficit number in 1989 had been $50 billion, the chart would have correctly shown that he reduced the deficit by $29 billion, but would have ignored all the years in between when the deficit was high and the national debt was increasing.

Using the chart for Reagan's terms for example, you could say that he increased the deficit by $73.6 billion, which doesn't sound horrible, given recent numbers. But when you look at each year of deficits, and calculate what was added to the national debt, it's $1.412 trillion over 8 years.

Plus, looking at the deficit at the beginning of a term and the end of a term doesn't account for anything that happened in the intervening years that required unexpected big hikes in spending.

Bill Clinton is the only President in the chart that actually subtracted from the national debt, and everyone else added to it.

Reagan: $1.412 trillion (8 years, $177B/year)
Bush I: $1.036 trillion (4 years, $259B/year)
Clinton: -$62.8 billion (8 years,, $-7.85B/year)
Bush II: $3.534 trillion (8 years, $442B/year) (9/11, wars, Great Recession)
Obama: $6.557 trillion (8 years, $820B/year) (Great Recession)
Trump: $7.663 trillion (4 years, $1.92T/year) (COVID)
Biden: $4.9 trillion (3 years, because they only show the first three fiscal years of his administration, $1.6T/year) (COVID)

As for whether or not Democrats have been better stewards of the national debt, pre-Clinton and Clinton, yes, Democrats were definitely better. Post-Clinton it's hard to tell, because every President since him has had some kind of national crisis that had to be dealt with, primarily the Great Recession and COVID, which naturally increased spending.

For Bush II, deficits were going back down during his second term until the Great Recession hit, so it's impossible to tell what his final year of deficit would have been.

For Obama, he brought down deficits that were at their peak during the Great Recession, but in his final two years in office, deficits were creeping back up. Had he not had to do the initial spending for the Great Recession, thus already starting him in a deep hole, would he eventually gotten to a balanced budget? No way to know.

For Trump, deficits were going up, no question, and then exploded during COVID, so he was definitely adding to the debt bigly, even before COVID.

For Biden, he brought the deficit down from peak COVID spending, but they immediately started going up again. Would he have brought them back down in a second term? No way to know.

All of this is to say that showing a starting number and an ending number, and using that to prove that someone is doing a great job or someone is doing a crappy job isn't necessarily valid.