Okay, now we're ready to look at the economic impact of the Vietnam War. The chart below shows the amount of money that the U.S. government spent on the Vietnam War. The numbers highlighted in red indicate a deficit in the U.S. government's budget. This means that the government spent more money than it earned through tax revenues.

In 1968 and then again in the early 1970s, federal deficits reached new heights in the face of the Vietnam War. Since that time, the federal government has annually run in the red, with large deficits that have ultimately led to the accumulation of a massive national debt, which currently stands in the trillions of dollars.

Below are three tables that show what happened to the federal deficit in only twenty years.

In your notes, record three of the MOST IMPORTANT words or phrases that summarize the main idea of the reading above.