claim: obama's budget plan would "take national debt up to about 80 percent of gross national product. ... historically, it's been about 40 percent."
author: judd gregg
evidence_1: feb 24, 2017 ... the annual deficit spiked following the 2008 financial crisis, and budget analysts  say that without reform government spending will continue to ... the average over  the past five decades has been 3 percent. ... it has nearly doubled since 2007,  rising from about 40 percent to nearly 80 percent of gdp.
evidence_2: to allow comparisons over the years, public debt is often expressed as a ratio to  gross domestic product (gdp). historically, the united states public debt as a  share of gdp has increased during wars and recessions, and subsequently  declined. the united states public debt as a percentage of gdp reached its  highest ...
evidence_3: federal government spending shows charts on national us spending by year as  a percentage of gdp. part of the federal revenue and ... the federal  government has closed out its fourth straight year of trillion-dollar-plus deficits,  and the imperative to rein in spending has never been greater. because all  government ...
evidence_4: one measure of the debt burden is its size relative to gdp, called the "debt-to- gdp ratio." mathematically, this is the debt divided by the gdp amount. the  congressional budget office includes historical budget and debt tables along  with its annual "budget and economic outlook." debt held by the public as a  percentage of ...
evidence_5: sep 6, 2017 ... revenues will need to rise at least as much to prevent the debt-to-gdp ratio from  growing. whether historical averages were ever appropriate fiscal benchmarks,  they cannot be in the future.since 1976, federal spending has averaged 20.5  percent of gdp, although its composition has changed substantially ...