It's approaching 100%. As for the deficit, it's at 4% and rising to 4.7% in 2019.

During full employment. During what can reasonably be called boomed times. Historic deficits.

This isn't normal.

Also look at the interest paid on the debt, which is also low relative to historical levels

it's rising though, and will, I assume, rise faster as interest rates rise and the cost of the debt rises along with it (either immediately or in the near future). IIRC, current interest on debt is something like $400B, which is more than the budgets of many entire depts (dept of energy budget is ~$30B for example).

Does that metric work well on this timescale? I thought with how much debt we have spending will pretty much always lower the ratio in the short term.

Not sure why since I was talking about percentage change in deficit.

And I am more concerned whether the tax cuts delivered an effective ROI.