Learn from history or our nation's debt

There has been a lot of talk regarding the large budget deficits of the Obama administration. One thing we can all agree on is the country's national debt is a huge problem. Republicans have finally gotten serious regarding this issue; however, let's look back at the history of the national debt.

From 1932 to 1945 our country experienced a huge increase in this debt level, a result of the Great Depression and the tremendous costs of World War II. In the following 35 years the debt level was drastically decreased as a percentage of GDP.

That all changed in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. The national debt in 1981 was still under $1 trillion, but in the following 12 years under Regan/Bush 41 it more than quadrupled to above $4 trillion. It should be obvious to all the top marginal tax rate of 39.6 percent did not harm the economy since we had the longest period of economic expansion in the history of our nation between 1993 and 2001, and more importantly Bush 43 inherited projected surpluses of over $1 trillion per year.

This all changed with two wars and two massive tax cuts, and these surpluses quickly changed to deficits, and, even though “Mission Accomplished” occurred in 2003. Obama inherited these two wars in 2009 plus the worst economy since the Great Depression. Obama and Ben Bernanke could have taken the Herbert Hoover path of 1930-1932 and done nothing, expecting the “free markets' to correct them selves, or he could learn from these mistakes and inject huge amounts of money into the economy to avoid another depression.

These huge amounts obviously added to the debt, but we are supposed to learn from the mistakes of the Hoover administration and not allow another Great Depression to occur.

Phil Williams

Palatine