American Government / Unit 10 Gov 459 short lesson, about 20 seconds
ERROR: "The Deficit and the Debt Are the Same"
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The idea
The claim that the deficit and the debt are the same is false: the deficit is one year's shortfall; the debt is the accumulation.
In practice
One 2016 snapshot: a deficit above 400 billion dollars, atop a debt near 19 trillion.
Where people slip
The numbers differ by orders of magnitude — swapping the terms is a huge error.
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