https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/12/20/why-republicans-love-debt
"One of the most successful deceits of modern times is that Republicans oppose government debt. In fact, Republicans love government debt and expand it whenever they can. It’s important to understand this fact. It’s even more important to understand why it is so and why Trump’s tax cut is a classic case of self-interested Republican budget busting. The last Republican president to produce a balanced budget was Richard Nixon, in 1969, almost 50 years ago. Since then, not a single Republican administration has produced a balanced budget. Not one. All have produced debt. Mountains of it. Ronald Reagan was the King of Debt. When he came into office, in 1981, the national debt stood at $1 trillion. Twelve years later, when his Vice President, George H. W. Bush, left office, the national debt stood at $4 trillion. Think about that for a moment. Over the span of 204 years, from 1776 to 1980, the nation fought the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, built out the continent, fought World War I, survived the Great Depression, fought and won World War II and the better part of the Cold War. And through all of that it only created $1 trillion of debt. Then, in a single 12-year period of relative peace and prosperity, Reagan and Bush I quadrupled it. Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy. The result was not only the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history, but the first budget surpluses in 30 years. He handed George W. Bush a $128 billion surplus. Bush immediately enacted Reagan-esque tax cuts where 50% of the gains went to the top 1% of income earners. He turned the Clinton surplus into a $158 billion deficit in his first year, a staggering swing of $286 billion in only two years. Bush more than doubled the national debt in only eight years, fom $5.8 trillion to $11.9 trillion. So, the FACT of Republicans producing debt is indisputable. It is even more important to understand why they do so with such relentless intensity."
