Drawing my figures from this website, which has lots of other interesting info as well.
Reagan 189.0%
Bush 43 89.0%
Bush 41 51.6%
Carter 42.6%
Clinton 36.0%
Obama 34.0%
Anyone notice a pattern????
see update beneath the fold
a good friend has argued that no President is really responsible for what happens in the first year of his term, it should be attributed to his predecessor, since it is usually not before late Fall when the new budget goes into affect that one can see impact of his policies
I am going to disagree
Consider what it would mean for Carter and for Reagan
Restating Carter in that fashion would take the debt at the end of his first year and divide that into the debt at the end of Reagan's first year
That would give an increase of 43%.
But that would be very misleading. Reagan got his tax cuts enacted, which immediately started to balloon the deficit.
Still, let's do the comparison for the others. I am taking first year of next president (or in case of Obama, last partial year shown so far) and dividing that by first year of presidency. My arithmetic could be wrong
Reagan - 187%
Bush 41 - 53%
Clinton - 31%
Bush 43 - 107%
Obama - 16% throu 6/30/11
overall pattern does not change
all 3 Republicans are higher than all 3 Democrats. In this case, though, Obama's rate is very understated, given that ARRA was signed into law in late February of 2009, thus part of its impact upon deficit is inappropriately being attributed to Bush rather than to Obama.