So the recession caused the debt but a "boom" wasn't able to bring us back to even? The 90's boom did.....I wonder why. Something Clinton did in 1994 that was also quite unpopular perhaps?
yes, 20 years of boom (interrupted only by the mini-recession of 90) did eventually bring it back to even, but it took the ending of the cold war (credit Reagan), low inflation (credit Reagan), a Congress that was against giving money to those unwilling to work (credit Clinton being a total joke during his first two years), and hundreds of billions of dollars of tax revenue PER YEAR of short term capital gains to bring it into surplus.
But, since then, many things ignored during the preceding 40 years have come home to roost: the ponzi scheme of social security and medicare (blame both Dems and GOP), loaning money to those unable to pay it back (sub prime mortgages, blame Dems - which STILL hasnt been fixed), the removal of the uptick rule (blame GOP), the unwillingness to tap our natural resources (blame tree huggers), and the idea that Muslim societies will eventually be brought into the civilized world (blame both Dems and GOP).
Oh, and BTW, those last two, the one about the Muslims and about us being energy dependent...we're only seeing the beginning of the trouble. Within the next 10-20 years, maybe a lot sooner, there is going to come a war in the ME that will change your economic future forever.