Today's deficits are entirely too high. You'll certainly get no argument from me on that point. However, when adjusted for inflation, it isn't the "largest deficit in history" as you assert.

The national debt is the running total of all the deficits plus other government indebtedness. From the Bureau of Public Debt, the total national debt as of yesterday is $7,305,298,980,147.07. At the end of last fiscal year (09/30/2003), the debt was $6,783,231,062,743.62. So far this fiscal year, the debt has increased (ignoring the pennies) by $522,067,917,404. That's a butt load of debt, to be sure, and the fiscal year isn't over.

It's interesting to note that during the "balanced budget days" of the late 1990s, the national debt increased every single year. Sounds like some some typical government smoke and mirrors accounting was going on.

If someone is trying to say that today's high deficits are the highest in history, then it actually helps to look at historical information. The actual record high deficits happened during WWII, as might be expected. The total debt increased from approximately $136.7 billion in 1943 to $201.0 billion in 1944, an increase of $64.3 billion. Using the handy Inflation Calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, that is the equivalent to $694.05 billion today.

Admittedly, WWII was a special case where our national survival was at stake and any amount of spending was justified. So, let's consider some more recent numbers. For example, during the height of a recession and the Savings & Loan bailout, the national debt increased from $3.23 trillion at the end of FY90 to $3.67 trillion at the end of FY91, an increase of $442 billion. That's the equivalent of $615.62 billion today, a value far higher than even today's absurdly high deficits.

It never ceases to amuse me that so many people fail to see that deficits have two causes - spending levels and revenues. So many people rail about tax cuts and their effects on revenues (and ignore when the cuts typically cause revenues to increase) but are silent about increases in spending. The size of the federal budget, in real dollar terms, has increased far faster than the rate of inflation and population increases combines for many years. Bush is due for a lot of justified criticism for failing to slow the increase in spending, but to blame it all on tax cuts is simplistic.