United States National Debt Situation
According to Aresearchguide.com, Thomas Jefferson in 1817 once said, “I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.” Well he was right and we are now “$10,946,904,836,827.63” dollars in debt, according to Brillig.com. That means that each citizen’s share of debt is more than 30,000 dollars. National debt is the total amount of money the United States Treasury Department has borrowed and currently owes to the federal government's creditors. These creditors are mostly comprised of the public, including individuals, corporations, as well as state, local and foreign governments. The most important situations to look at that caused our national debt to rise over the years would have to be; World War I, World War II, and the current War on Terrorism.
It all started in 1790 when Alexander Hamilton made his first report on the national debt of the U.S. He estimated the national debt of the U.S. to be 70 million dollars. After growing and declining in 1840, the debt was only at 4 million dollars. This was the lowest point achieved by the national public debt of the U.S. In the last year of the Civil War the U.S. national debt increased to almost 2.68 billion dollars. The U.S. national debt afterwards fell and altered around $1.15 billion for many years after, until it began to rise again during World War I. “In 1919 the national public debt amounted to almost $25.5 billion.” (Michael 2002) In the prosperous years of the 1920s, the public debt declined. During the depression of 1929 and in the 1930s, it rose again, swelled by deficit spending under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal social programs.
During World War II the debt rose to what was then thought to be a staggering amount. In 1945, according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the national debt was “$260.12 billion.” (Michael 2002) The national debt declined for...