Word on Tuesday was that a budget deal has been struck between the White House and Congress to avoid another debt-ceiling fiscal calamity. The two-year agreement would raise domestic and defense spending by $80 billion and lift the national borrowing limit until March 2017. There are also cuts to the Social Security disability program and to Medicare, though. The Federal debt stands at about $18 trillion, two-thirds of it added just in the last decade, as this infographic from the White House website shows. (So some politics written into the chart? Red is Republican and Blue is Democratic. The chart says the George W. Bush tax cuts added $5 trillion to the debt. The chart also says the US Government owes the Social Security Trust Fund $14 trillion).
