ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the growth in the debt during the Bush and Obama presidencies. The new millennium brought an end to the deleveraging of the late 1990s. The reversal was a product of many factors, including deep tax cuts, the expiration of budget controls implemented in the 1990s, the expansion of Medicare, and ongoing growth in mandatory spending. At the same time, two protracted wars funded off-budget, the financial crisis, and the Great Recession had significant fiscal ramifications. Policymaking was complicated by growing political polarization in Congress, the abandonment of regular order, and growing dysfunction in the budgetary process. Between 2001 and 2016, the debt more than doubled relative to the economy reaching the highest level since 1950.
