Deficit shrinks by $1 trillion in Obama era (2015)

This article is from 2015, and as a result, that is the last reported year.

I found a more up-to-date data set at http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/ which is consistent with the reported years, and includes both earlier years and an estimate for 2016. Unfortunately, it seems the deficit is growing again, with an estimate of -$616 billion for 2016.

It's also worth looking at earlier years -- nothing before 2009 was higher than $464 billion. Looking at a longer timeline, it seems clear that the general trend is towards a bigger deficit, but the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis means we can play games with statistics by framing our timeline around that year.

This is similar to the trick used by Ted Cruz to argue against climate change, by insisting on presenting the data on an 18-year timeline, so that it would start in 1997 and include that year's abnormally high temperatures caused by an El Niño weather pattern.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fact-check-ted-cruzs-claims-abou...

One can't understand this without first understanding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt-ceiling_cri...

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011