This is a nice graphic demonstrating the primary reason for my shameful (in the eyes of many of my friends and family) transition from “conservative” to “liberal”:
No Republican president has balanced a budget in close to 40 years. I can’t remember which budget that would have been, but it was some time during the Nixon administration. Ford didn’t do it. Reagan didn’t do it. George H.W. Bush didn’t do it. And George W. Bush didn’t do it. Since 1980, Republicans Reagan, Bush, and Bush have had 20 opportunities to preside over a balanced budget and have not managed it once. For Reagan, I’ve been told that the Democratic Congress was the problem all 8 years. For Bush the Elder, again, it was those darn Democrats. When Clinton presided over balanced budgets, then it was because of the Republican Congress. But when Bush the Younger had a Republican Congress to work with, deficits hit record highs. It’s time to face the fact that, with Republican administrations, budget deficits are not the exception, they are an iron-clad rule.
I think what Reagan (and perhaps Dubya) understood was that deficits are actually useful. By steadily increasing the size of the deficit, Reagan was able to insure that no new entitlement programs (ex. national health insurance) would ever be possible. So in a way, Conservatives probably want deficit spending as it hampers progress on new social welfare programs.
It’s kind of like getting really fat as a method of controlling one’s diet. You get all of the negative health effects without enjoying tasty food.
Or that Viet Nam favorite – burning down the village to save it.
A few thoughts:
-Bush I and Bush II are certainly not fiscal conservatives (FC) by any objective measure. (That’s like Hill and Sodrel claiming to be fiscal conservatives in the 9th District!) In fact, Clinton and Bush I are almost indistinguishable in terms of economics. Bush II has preferred both more spending and some Keynesian tax cuts.
-Clinton had one tiny “budget” surplus ($10 billion?), unless you’re playing games with the Social Security surpluses in those years.
-I’d have to go back and check, but I think JFK had the last budget surplus.
-Whatever one thinks about the Reagan Cold War efforts, they are the primary cause of the 1980s budget deficits. (The massive marginal tax rate cuts of 1981 did not reduce revenues as a percentage of GDP.) Reductions in (post-Cold War) military spending during the 1990s made reductions in the deficit a lot easier. In a word, military spending is the key to understanding the 80s and 90s. The loss of virtually all FC roots– both Bush and his Republican and now Democratic Congresses– is the main story of the 2000s.
-All that debt has devalued the dollar by about 40% since 2002– interestingly, the #1 cause of higher gas prices since then.
Many people don’t see the need to balance the family budget anymore,even if they could. There are so many gimmicks to get people into debt; No interest or payments for 2 years when buying furniture/buying a car based only on how much the monthly payment is/give anyone who applies a credit card because revolving credit is as profitable for business as it for putting certain low-wage ( and middle class) consumers into hopeless debt.Back in the 50s my parents used to buy on ‘lay-away’. What ever happened to that as an advertised option? It took a while to get it,but it was paid for..
McCain just yesterday promised to balance his big tax cuts proposals by ‘adjusting'(cutting) SS and health care..and liberals and critics won’t be able even discuss it without being accused of ‘class warfare’
I bought into all this ‘conservative consumerism’ and became too much in debt as a young man,but gradually got myself fiscally responsible,but it wasn’t easy.I’m not sure what ‘liberal economics’ are but they got to be better for the common man.
Funny how deficits never seem to limit defense spending.
Is Ike rocking anyone else’s little Indiana town like it is Tell City? The storm track appears to have missed us, but there’s damage everywhere. The building next door is pouring water due to some kind of damage, and building on the next block caught fire, the post office’s metal roof got rolled up and deposited on top of the mail trucks, and there are trees down everywhere.
I don’t want to hurt your feelings or burst your bubble or anything, but…
Despite 10 years of Republican and Democratic claims to the contrary, there was no surplus during the Clinton administration.
It’s pathetic that people on both sides of the aisle have gotten away with this lie for so long when it only takes 30 seconds of research to prove false.
Going to the Treasury Department’s website, you can bring up the historical debt from 1950-1999 (actually, any date range you want, but this one works for our discussion). The link is here.
You can see that the debt went up every single year in the 90’s.
Odd that you never hear that from the media, don’t you think?
Which is completely beside the point — Republican administrations didn’t even get close.
Actually, it is related to “the point” of the cartoon– because it grossly exaggerates Clinton’s “success” and provides no context for his administration or Reagan’s.
The broader point is that few Dems or Reps are fiscal conservatives.
I guess anyone is entitled to take their own point away from what I put up; but my point was not to prove that Democrats are fiscal conservatives but to point out that Republicans are not. The evidence suggests that Democratic Presidents are more fiscally conservative in practice than Republican Presidents.
sorry, I was conflating what you were saying and what the cartoon said…
the other interesting finding from the literature is that larger majorities are more prudent fiscally– which makes sense: they’re less tempted to use your money to try to buy your votes, since less is at stake.
so, it would not be surprising to see a large Democratic majority spend less than a narrow Republican majority…
bottom line– to your comment and in general: if you want fiscal conservatives, you typically have to go outside the major parties…
Looks like about a trillion of the debt was the eight Clinton years, seven trillion of it was the twenty Reagan-Bush-Bush years, and a trillion of it was the Washington thru Carter years.
There is a difference between debt and deficit. Our country will never be out of debt. But the deficit — the difference between the amount we bring in and the amount we owe in any one year — is what went down in the Clinton years.
In other words, we came close to actually paying the annual bill in those years than we do under Republicans. Seems like a minor point in a sea of red ink, but it IS an attempt in the right direction.
I am more concerned about these huge banks failing and we the taxpayers getting the bill.