What is the National Debt —and What is the Deficit?
Please note: the numbers in some of these article can quickly become out of date. Current numbers are always available on the page, The National Debt Numbers At a Glance. First, the annual deficit of the United States: Just like a person, or a corporation, the United States of America uses money for its operations. And just like a person or a corporation, that means it has both income and outlays. The income is derived from various taxes and fees. But of course, the biggest share of it comes from individual and corporate income taxes. The outlay is what the U. S. spends: for defense, highways, Medicare, et al, etc. There are thousands and thousands of categories of expenditure. In any year that we collect more than we spend, we have a surplus for the year. But, we have usually spent more than we collected, and we have a deficit for those years. We had a deficit in seventy of the years of the last century, and every year but one since 1970, because the U. S. spends more than it gets. Le
