from the text accompanying the graph....
i don't know what you mean by "reagan didn't even make the list." he's on there, and he's the biggest deficit since FDR until bush II comes along and blows the lid off everyone. where FDR is concerned, i may have misspoken. he did NOT run up large deficits for the new deal. he ran up large deficits during wwii, but they were largely paid back under truman, because of the post-war boom, so they don't really count.
sorry, that's just not right. he didn't run terribly large deficits during the new deal. he DID run large deficits during world war II, but the point of those deficits wasn't to stimulate the economy, it was to keep us all from having to learn german.
that's true, and subsequent presidents from truman to LBJ wisely chose to follow his fine example. since then we've strayed, and now we have a situation where fiscal policy is NOT being used to moderate the economy, and instead we're trusting the economy to moderate itself.
like the results so far?
again, i just think this is wrong. reagan was the first president to log deficits on the scale of wwii, and unlike FDR, those deficits are not being paid off. they're just getting bigger and bigger. so reagan is the first president to create structural deficits -- that is, deficits that stay on the books year after year, that are a result of settled fiscal policy rather than dealing with a transient crisis.
Here's the list I'm talking about from your source:
Table 2: The Top Ten Years
I have in my hand a copy of tonight's Top Ten list....
2008-2009, at $879 billion (transition from G. W. Bush to B. H. Obama)
2009-2010, at $758 billion (B. H. Obama)
2010-2011 (extrapolated), at $634 billion (B. H. Obama)
2007-2008, at $472 billion (G. W. Bush)
1942-1943, at $372 billion (F. D. Roosevelt)
1943-1944, at $365 billion (F. D. Roosevelt)
1944-1945, at $320 billion (transition from F. D. Roosevelt to H. S. Truman)
1990-1991, at $317 billion (G. H. W. Bush)
2003-2004, at $315 billion (G. W. Bush)
2002-2003, at $302 billion (G. W. Bush)
All of those figures are inflation-adjusted, of course.
Reagan is not on that list.
And as far as everything else you said about FDR not having large deficits until the war; again, from a historical perspective, you are wrong. The recent craziness does nothing to diminish the fact that FDR was the first president to run exceptionally large deficits for the stimulous effect.
Look at the graph of the deficit as a percentage of gdp. FDR ran historically giant deficits well before the US entered the war. So everything you're saying about blah blah the new deal didn't run significant deficits IS FACTUALLY WRONG. Just because the subsequent deficits for the war were even larger does not diminish the fact that FDR was the first president to consistently run very significant deficits. Go look at the graph, before the war he ran deficits on the scale of Reagan and Bush I and most of Bush II's terms.
I can't believe you actually think FDR didn't run large deficits to stimulate the economy. That should almost be historical commen sense.
Reagan did not have deficits on the scale of WWII. Again, go look at the graph, you're way off base. And FDR's
deficits were NEVER paid off. The country ran a surplus after the war but it didn't come anywhere near paying off the accrued
debt on FDR's war deficits - much less the VERY REAL AND SIGNIFICANT new deal deficits. If you think that you're delusional. Of course, based upon everthing else you've said and tried to spin, you are delusional. So good luck with living in fantasy land. You definitely deserve this one:

.