PGL at Angry Bear flags this Dean Baker post in which Baker notes that We will almost certainly end the Bush years with a higher debt to GDP ratio than we had at the start of the Clinton presidency. That is not a disaster, but the next administration will not have the luxury of allowing the debt to increase in the same way. PGL includes a version of this chart and comments: (click on image to enlarge) Even with the moves towards fiscal restraint during the first Clinton term and other movements toward reversing the fiscal folly from the 1981 tax cut that predated Clinton's election, the reversal of this rising debt to GDP ratio did not come up the ratio peaked at 67.3 percent in 1996. But for the next five years, we saw the ratio decline to 57.4 percent. Of course, George W. Bush wanted to change all that so he pushed for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and signed the Prescription Drug Benefit and has engaged our nation in a costly war...Not only is the debt to GDP ratio projected to pass where it was as of 1992, it is projected to pass where it was in 1996.