What's the difference between DEFICIT and DEBT?

Debt is total owed, deficit is yearly shortfall.

A deficit is a shortfall in revenue.

A debt is an amount that is owed.

It is a budget term that has little if any actual fact in real and actual math.

If company a expects to make 2 monies this year and makes 3 monies, that is a surplus, if they make 1 monies, that is a deficit.

When company a buys a tractor for 8 monies and they only have 6 monies, if it is lent to them or payments are accepted on a time or trade that is a debt.

When company a runs the tractor into a tree and it costs 4 monies to make it work again, that is an UN-expected debt.

When company a sets aside or saves a set amount of surplus every month for expenditures that are unexpected, that is a smart company and they can afford the tractor-tree incident.

When company a has a bad crop because of floods and tractor failures, that could be a deficit, or just bad business practice.

The National Deficit is expected to be X, then a tornado hits and it becomes XYz. The National Debt is the actual monies that we know are owed and should be paid.

We know that B-2 zombie attack plane was going to cost 18 billion monies, then the contractor found an error and that went up, now we have the zombie killers and need to keep them flying, that is a Deficit.

Deficit is like Unexpected Debt, sorta.

In the context of the federal budget, the deficit is the amount by which expenditures exceed revenues for a given year. As in "the fiscal 2012 budget deficit."

The national debt is all the money owed by the government in total at any given point in time. Such as "as of October 1, 2012, the national debt was approximately $16 billion and change."

The analogy would be: deficit is to annual loss, as debt is to total debt owed.

The apparent lack of understanding (willful or otherwise) comes when people say something like "Clinton left us with a surplus." yes, the last two or three budgets he presided over were in surplus, and the national debt should thereby have been reduced slightly.

But the US still had close to $6 trillion in debt when he left office. Under eight years of Bush, it grew to about $10 trillion. Under just less than four years of Obama, it has grown to over $16 trillion.

People claim that Clinton and Obama have each reduced the annual deficit under their respective terms. this is probably true. But this could be accomplished by running up huge deficits in earlier years and lesser ones in later years. The same way that a student who has gone from an F to a D grade, rather than one who has consistently earned A grades, would be deemed the "most improved."

Again, whether defenders of Democrats simply don't understand the point, or are deliberately trying to mislead others, I do not know.

Deficit = the shortfall between the revenue and what is spent

EXAMPLE: If you make 4000 per month and your expenses are 5000 per month, then you have a spending deficit of 1000 per month.

Debt = the amount of money that you have borrowed plus any accumulated interest and fees.

Deficit is the amount we are short on for the current budget.

Debt is the total amount we owe.

The debt is the overall amount of how much we owe

The deficit is how much is spent per year

Debt is money currently owed.

Deficit is money promised that exceeds revenue .

If you know you have $5,000.00 in bills next month but will only earn $4,000.00 , you have a $1,000.00 deficit.

deficit is one year

the debt is the cummaltive sum of all the deficits and surpluses

deficit is what we are behind in

debt is what owed to creditors

One you owe. One is paid.