The problem with these calculations is accounting gimmicks used to mask the true numbers. These tricks include borrowing from the Social Security surpluses, supplemental appropriations, and shifting accounting dates into future years. Also, the deficit and debt numbers are often reported as a percentage of the GDP and this calculation distorts the real results making them less shocking to the general public.

The result of these accounting gimmicks and bad comparison calculations is confusion among the general public about who is responsible for creating these deficits and the size of the debt problem.

For example, this past federal fiscal year that ended September 30, 2009 the deficit was reported as 12.9% of the GDP. I did some research and found that the deficit was $1.4 trillion, and the total federal debt increased by $2.1 trillion to a total of $11.7 trillion, of which foreigners own approximately $3.8 trillion.

Many people blame the Obama administration for these terrible budget results, but let’s shine some light on the facts to see what really happened and which administration is truly to blame.

Each new administration brings its own policies into office and their policies do effect the economy as well as government revenues and expenses, however, there is roughly a one year delay in their policies effecting the current trend in budget direction from the previous administration.

For example, when Obama took office on January 20, 2009 it was already almost 4 months into the 2009 fiscal accounting year, and by the time he got his cabinet officials appointed and approved he was over 6 months into the federal fiscal accounting year. This left them very little time to draft and pass legislation that might effect the last few months of the fiscal year. Historically, a new administration's legislative actions do not start to effect the budget numbers (revenues and expenses) until the next accounting year, which in Obama's case started October 1, 2009, and even then the change in direction is gradual.

Therefore, a more accurate and honest way to look at the historic deficit and debt numbers is to shift the results from the first year of a new administration to the last year of the old administration. Following is a summary of the deficit spending and total debt by administration using my first year number shifting idea (Data is from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) spreadsheets):

* The difference between the deficits and the increases in the total debt is mostly the money borrowed from the Social Security surpluses and other government Trust Funds.

Based on my calculations the past three Republican administrations have increased the total federal debt by $8.5 trillion and the Democrats added $1.1 trillion during the Clinton administration.

President Reagan cut the top tax rate from 70% to 28% and reduced the number of tax brackets from 16 to 2. These reductions in revenues along with huge increases in military spending sent the debt skyrocketing.

President Clinton raised the top tax rate to 36% and increased the number of tax brackets to 5. These increases in revenue along with PAYGO spending controls helped to move the federal budget back into the black by the end of his term.

President George W. Bush started a war in Iraq and passed huge tax cuts reducing the top tax rate to 33%. These tax cuts and war cost helped send the federal budget back deep into the red.

As a result of Reagan's and George W. Bush's highly regressive tax legislation the most highly taxed people in our society today are people who are self-employed earning around $90,000 per year.

Thanks to the past four administration's actions our government now owes over $12 trillion ($12,000,000,000,000) to bondholders and the interest cost of the federal debt has become a major budget item.

Currently, government T-bills are earning an average of 3%, which makes the interest cost on the federal debt around $360 billion per year. In fiscal year 2009 the government spent $383 billion on interest cost, which is over $1 billion per day.

However, if interest rates were to increase to say 9% the interest cost on the debt would increase to around $1 trillion per year, or more depending on how much more debt is added between now and then. In 1981 the average T-bill rate went above 13%, and it could happen again.

Interest cost on the federal debt does not build one school, bridge, tank, or road. The American people get nothing for those tax dollars, but the rich get a lot richer on an investment that has almost zero risk.

The current $12 trillion in federal debt represents claims on the future productivity of American workers. This means that some percentage of every dollar earned by an American worker in the future must be used to pay interest on this debt, and to retire maturing debt. Since foreigners own around 50% of the federal debt held by the public much of that money is going to other countries were their people are competing against American workers. Therefore, in a way we are funding the destruction of our own middle class with all this debt and the people who are getting hurt the most are the ones who are paying the most to make it happen.

What has President Obama and the Democratically controlled Congress done to try and close the budget gap, or reduce the regressivness of our tax system? NOTHING. In fact, they have increased the gap with additional spending in an attempt to get the economy growing, and by allowing the estate tax to go from 45% this year (2009) to 0% next year (2010).

The failing economy is not their fault, and trying to get it going with additional spending is a good idea. However, by ignoring the revenue side of the equation they are creating astronomically higher budget deficits and debt, and by allowing the estate tax to expire they are creating a much more regressive tax structure.

If these type of budget results continue, or if interest rates increase significantly, our federal government could quickly become insolvent forcing it to liquidate its vast assets to the highest bidder.

The federal government's assets are mostly land holdings since it still owns around 20% of all land in America valued at around $100 trillion. However, because of the huge number of corrupt officials in our government this liquidation would probably be done in such a way to only generate enough money to pay the interest on the debt and not any of the debt itself. In other words, the liquidation would just be another trillion dollar real estate scam that would leave the American people scratching their heads wondering what the hell happened.

I don’t believe that these huge deficits and debt are an accident. They are deliberately designed to force our government to sell off its vast assets – our collectively owned assets -- for pennies on the dollar to people who already own most of the other assets in America. In other words, our elected leaders and some of their mega wealthy campaign contributors have been conspiring to rob our government of it vast real estate assets while lying to us about what they are really doing.

The end result will be a further concentration of our country’s wealth into the hands of fewer people and fewer people and a continued shifting of the tax burden down to the people who can least afford it. The rich get the gold and we get the shaft.