scorecardThe federal deficit ballooned in the 2009 fiscal year, as the government ramped up spending and tax revenues fell in the wake of the crisis. Deficits shrank in subsequent years, but have increased under Trump.
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  4. Trump boasts the economy is the best it's ever been. Here are 9 charts showing how it's fared compared to the Obama and Bush presidencies.
  5. The federal deficit ballooned in the 2009 fiscal year, as the government ramped up spending and tax revenues fell in the wake of the crisis. Deficits shrank in subsequent years, but have increased under Trump.

The federal deficit ballooned in the 2009 fiscal year, as the government ramped up spending and tax revenues fell in the wake of the crisis. Deficits shrank in subsequent years, but have increased under Trump.

The federal deficit is the shortfall between federal revenue and how much the government spends in a fiscal year. When the economy is healthy, the federal deficit is expected to shrink since the government pulls back on spending and has more space to raise taxes.

Bush took over a strong economy from his predecessor, Bill Clinton, with a budget surplus of $128 billion in fiscal year 2001. And it was the last time the US government had a surplus on its hands. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a series of tax cuts, erased it and jacked up the deficit.

Obama ran massive deficits in his 2009 stimulus package to jolt the economy during the Great Recession. Then the next year, he passed an $858 billion tax cut that included an extension of the Bush tax cuts that had similarly ramped up deficits almost a decade before.

Trump has continued running massive deficits during his presidency, which only widened with the passage of the 2017 GOP tax cuts.

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