(click for more bodacious image!)We have had exactly ONE fiscally conservative prez in the last 30 years, and his name was...CLINTON. Sorry, Repubs: you all suck!
(Debt=publicly held debt + intergovernmental debt; no way do you get to ignore T-bonds that happen to be held by the Soc Sec Trust Fund. If SSTF gets to count the bond as an asset, then that is a big honking debt on the government balance sheet. And I got the pic by taking a Nat Post graph and making it a ppt slide, so I could add the notations)
12 comments:
This would matter if the President was responsible for passing the budget. Your focus should be on the Congress. Let's not point the focus on the President, which is a constitutionally very limited position, anymore than we already have to.
I agree. It seems to me that Clinton just got stuck in a situation of structural surpluses (surpli?). That said, I never thought I would think back to the Clinton presidency as the salad years.
If you ever want to use that graph again, here's an easier place to get it that already has the presidents marked. It's from this cool website called Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
Specifically:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent_of_GDP_by_President.jpg
More seriously though, I would be interested in seeing who controlled the House and the Senate during those years, but I'm too busy to find it.
I think we need to use the word "relative" here as the federal debt climbed throughout the Clinton years. You can find the stats. on the Treasury website.
I agree on the intergovernmental debt. Somebody spent that cash, and it wasn't me.
I don't know that you can find a better representation of getting more of what you subsidize. Or that if the consumers of a product/service don't have to pay the full price, they'll demand more of said product/service.
I guess the current plan is to stick the Chinese peasants with the bill.
For an interesting look at the reality of the Clinton administration I have a suspicion (just a suspicion, as I am not an academic and have no incentive to do the real hard work) that the growth of specific and implied loan guarantees during the Clinton administration is where the action is. Fannie, Freddie, FHA, SBA, Export/Import, Farmer/Ag you name it. I imagine it looks a lot line the shrub's graph.
The Republicans are the party of stupid. Clinton had Bob Rubin. I have no doubt in my mind as to who could make the books look better. Actual performance? Not much difference.
It's a Team Coke, Team Pepsi thing.
Run the same analysis showing from which party was the Speaker of the House and see how it looks - the correlation breaks down somewhat.
More interesting is to note the spikes (1917 for WWI, 1930 for Great Depression, 1941 for WWII, and 1980 for Reagan Build-up). Even after the given reason for the government spending is long past, it never returns back to the level prior to the spike.
This suggests that once politicians gain power over spending, they will retain that power. For those that loath the Bush years of spending...history suggest we've seen a permanent expansion of government beyond even that as a result of the Great Recession. Whether this is good or bad depends on your opinion of whether you or politicians are better at spending your money.
The Republicans deserve plenty of blame for the deficits, but to call Clinton fiscally conservative is quite silly since you need to ignore the economy (which he had little to do with), measures passed by his predecesor, and a Republican Congress for most of Clinton's presidency (which stopped his spending aspirations). I think his is a lot more enlightening when you look at it from the perspective of tax receipts and spending.
My more informative chart on the St. Louis Fed site -- fred2
Notice that tax receipts and spending were trending in the right direction well before Clinton was truly positioned to change much of anything. Further, note that the position was much reversed with GWB.... [Yes, GWB did a bunch of non-fiscally conservative things that hurt, but it wasn't _all_ his fault either].
This would matter if the President was responsible for passing the budget. Your focus should be on the Congress. Let's not point the focus on the President, which is a constitutionally very limited position, anymore than we already have to.
Except that the President makes the budget requests, pushes key policies, and then seeks to take credit for both of these.
For example, they call them "The Bush Tax Cuts" for a reason. They were proposed and championed by the Chief Executive. To pretend that the modern Presidency hasn't grown beyond its original constitutional role is incredibly naive.
gnore the economy (which he had little to do with)
He was smart enough not to fuck it up. That's pretty good in my book, even if we ignore the fact that the economy historically does better under Democratic administrations.
Further, note that the position was much reversed with GWB
True. Because Bush and his Republican Congress cut income tax rates while at the same time spending more than ever.
Less revenue + more spending = more debt.
More seriously though, I would be interested in seeing who controlled the House and the Senate during those years, but I'm too busy to find it.
For most of that long downward slope, Democrats controlled the House.
In 1980, Republicans take the White House and the Senate. Suddenly we start adding debt.
In 2000, Republicans once again control all three branches. Once again, debt rises.
"True. Because Bush and his Republican Congress cut income tax rates while at the same time spending more than ever. "No, if you look at the FRED2 chart I assembled you can clearly see tax receipts falling dramatically starting 2000 due to the DotCom crash and 9-11 recession -- spending as a share of GDP also naturally increased...
What you seem to forget is that the Bush tax cuts were not effective until FY 2002 and the receipts lag the GDP results by about 1 year... It's very clear on the chart.
a better view
Note: I'm not suggesting that Bush's tax cuts and spending didn't contribute. However, clearly the economy contributed greatly to the deficit in first two years of GWB's presidency and, if you look closely, tax receipts were actually on the rise in 2004.
Clearly we would have had a significantly smaller deficit had Bush spent less and not cut taxes, but it's also clear that Bush wasn't entirely responsible for this any more than Clinton was responsible for lack of deficit in the last ~2 years of his presidency.
world war two took a big chunk of our money away
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