TIGHT AS A TOURNIQUET:

By the war's end, the U.S. government's public debt exceeded 120 percent of GDP, almost twice today's ratio. America worked off that debt not by tightening its belt but by liberating the economy's potential. In 1945, there was no panel like President Obama's Bowles-Simpson commission targeting the debt ratio a decade into the future and commending 10 years of budget cuts. Rather, the greater worry was that absent the stimulus of war and with 12 million newly jobless GIs returning home, the civilian economy would revert to depression. So America doubled down on its public investments with programs like the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. For three decades, the economy grew faster than the debt, and the debt dwindled to less than 30 percent of GDP. 

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