In July 2025, a meme began to circulate online purporting to show that the U.S. budget deficit had deepened under every Republican president and shrunk under every Democratic president since Ronald Reagan, who took office in January 1981.
For example, a Facebook post relayed the claim, listing the deficit change for each president since Reagan (archived):
(Facebook user Care2)
The post read:
Change in federal deficit:Ronald Reagan +$74BGeorge Bush Sr. +$102BBill Clinton (-$383B)George Bush Jr. +$1.5TBarack Obama (-$825B)Donald Trump +$2TJoe Biden (-$942B)Donald Trump +$4T and counting
Versions of this list also appeared on Instagram, Threads and X.
Many such memes have circulated over the years, using various time frames. For example, in 2022, while Biden was still president, such a meme circulated claiming that for the last 50 years, only three Democratic presidents — Clinton, Obama and Biden — had successfully lowered the deficit.
A review of economic data since 1981 revealed that in absolute terms, the meme was mostly correct. However, it needed more context.
Deficit during each administration since Reagan
Compiling data from the Office of Management and Budget, the St. Louis Federal Reserve created a chart for the U.S. budgetary deficit or surplus — calculated as the difference between the country's total revenue and its spending:
This data shows that indeed, since 1981, the deficit deepened under Republican administrations and shrank under Democratic ones.
For example, the deficit was $78.9 billion in 1981, the first year of Reagan's presidency, and $152.6 billion in 1989, the year he left office. That difference is $73.6 billion or, as the meme rounded up, $74 billion.
Similarly, George H.W. Bush oversaw a deepening of the deficit to $102.4 billion.
Clinton then took over and presided over a deficit reduction of $383.3 billion during his eight years in the White House. This culminated in a budget surplus.
George W. Bush, who followed Clinton, led the country into two wars: one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. In the last months of his presidency in 2008, his administration worked with Congress to pass an emergency package to rescue a teetering U.S. economy as the subprime mortgage crisis took hold. These events contributed to creating a new budgetary deficit. By the time he left office in 2009, it had grown by more than $1.5 trillion.
Obama, whose administration led the recovery from the financial crisis, left office in 2017, when the deficit had shrunk not by $825 billion, as the meme indicated, but by $747.2 billion.
Trump's first term, which saw in its first two years a deepening of $300 billion in its deficit, then contended with the COVID-19 pandemic. By the time he left office, the deficit had grown by $2.1 trillion compared with 2017.
Much like Obama's, Biden's administration then oversaw the recovery from the pandemic. By the second half of 2024, for which the most recent data is available, the deficit had dropped by $942.5 billion.
Using these numbers and based on available data, the meme was correct — except for Obama's tenure.
It was, however, too early to determine how much of a deficit would occur under Trump's second term. However, the meme was using estimates that circulated after the passage of the "big beautiful" budget bill Congress passed at the president's urging in early July 2025. But as Snopes reported, experts predicted that this new budget would deepen the deficit by $3.9 trillion over 10 years — far past Trump's term limits.
Bringing context to the claim
Is it important to note that in the U.S., the president has limited powers over the budget. The legislative branch — Congress — ultimately has the last word. This is known as the "power of the purse," established by Article I, Section 9, clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution:
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
It is true, however, that the president's team typically seeks to influence and whips up votes both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate to support its agenda and budget priorities. Each year, the White House proposes a budget through the Office of Management and Budget. It can cajole or browbeat legislators with various incentives, such as helping them get reelected or threatening to throw their weight behind another candidate within their party at the following primary elections, as Trump did with Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina who voted against the 2025 budget bill. If Congress and the president don't agree, it can lead to a so-called government shutdown.
Equally important is the fact that looking at the deficit as a proportion of the U.S. economy is often a better measure of a government's fiscal health. A government might choose to spend more than in previous years to support economic recovery after a recession. In doing so, it bets that the economy will improve and that the resulting tax income will increase as consumers and companies earn and spend more. As a result, the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product can provide more clarity on a nation's ability to repay its debts. For example, if a deficit doubles and the size of the economy triples over the same period of time, the country's fiscal sustainability improves, despite a larger deficit in absolute terms.
A review of the deficit-to-GDP ratio over the years revealed a slightly different picture. There, too, the Saint Louis Fed compiled OMB data into a chart:
For instance, under the Reagan administration, the deficit went from representing 2.5% of the economy to 2.7% — a rather stable outcome for his tenure.
Under George H.W. Bush's leadership, the deficit became proportionally larger to 3.7%. Clinton, meanwhile, left office when the surplus reached 1.2% of GDP. With George W. Bush, the surplus disappeared and the deficit ballooned to 9.8% of GDP.
Obama's tenure then saw it shrink to 3.4%. Trump followed, overseeing a deficit that reached 11.7% of the economy in 2021, the highest of the period we've examined. Biden, who presided over the recovery from the pandemic, saw it return to the more manageable 6.3% of GDP, which remains historically high.
In sum, while the meme was mostly accurate, it lacked crucial context.