Words are inadequate

Since this led my curiosity to check, Andrew Jackson was the last sitting president when the US wasn't in debt. LBJ managed to fiddle with the numbers enough that in 1969, he managed to leave office with a balanced budget. Since then, we've had about 24 years of Republican Executive/Democratic Legislative inability to balance the budget, and 10 years of democratic Executive/Republican Legislative inability (since Clinton and the Republican Congress of '94 managed to balance for a couple of years).