Since 2011, the United States has accumulated over 3 trillion dollars' worth of debt, on top of the 14.3 trillion it already possessed prior to the start of 2011 (Dinan, 2013), making the total debt over 17 trillion dollars. Many Americans can't quite grasp how much money that really is, so to put it into perspective, use Bill Gates as an example. Bill Gates is one of the wealthiest men alive. His net worth is roughly 76 billion dollars. Every second, he makes approximately 68 dollars, and in one day he makes just under 5.9 million dollars. Even if Bill Gates donated every penny he owned every day for the rest of his life, our national debt would not even be lowered by one billion dollars. This leaves many Americans wondering what exactly caused our debt to get so out of hand. .
Bush Tax Cuts.
Under the presidency of George W. Bush, from about 2001 to 2003, 1.6 trillion dollars were added to the national debt. There is no other policy alone that has caused as much debt for the United States as this one has. Bush allowed certain businesses to be exempt from paying taxes, some of which were billion dollar companies. To an extent, the government relied on the taxes from these companies. When they were made exempt from paying, the economy suffered over time, and the national debt increased exponentially (Hacker, pp. 55-64).
During this period of time, the United States was also in a recession, and the damage caused by the tax cuts was an even heftier blow, and some would argue that the tax cuts could not have happened at a worse time. During the recession, the government did what they could financially to encourage spending, to help decrease the debt, but that fell through, adding billions more to the debt instead of helping it. .
Military Spending.
On top of the tax cuts imposed under the George W. Bush administration, near the same time frame there was a surplus in military spending. The United States was headed off to war, and there was an increase in buying weapons and supplies in preparation for a potentially long foreign war.
