The truth about fiscal responsibility
I read a ton about politics. It fascinates me. And of course 2/3rds of all political stories right now are about how America is mad as hell at all the government spending. I agree. I’m totally on board with fiscal responsibility. What I don’t get is why people think that voting Republican is a means to return to fiscal responsibility. Here are the facts. Pure, unadulterated, real, honest-to-goodness FACTS.
The source is
I would have preferred to use a federal government site, but the only one I could find (www.cbo.gov) only had data back to 1968. The data from this website matches the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) data for the overlap, so I went ahead and used it without further verification. I added in the column for President and Party. The ‘President’ column is the president in office when the budget was signed. (E.G. Because Reagan was in office in Oct/Nov 1988 when the budget was signed for FY 1989 … even though Bush was in office for all but 20 or so days of FY1989, Reagan gets credit for FY 1989.)
Here are a couple of interesting things to note. The last Republican president to sign a balanced budget was Eisenhower (1960). Clinton and Johnson both signed balanced budgets. The average of ‘deficit as a % of GDP’ (average of % is not exactly a valid measure, but work with me here) for Democratic presidents is 1.0%. For Republican presidents, it’s 2.6%. If you prefer the average size of the deficit then Democratic presidents (only counting years that were ACTUALLY deficit years so it doesn’t advantage Democratic presidents for budget surpluses) is $82.4 billion. For Republican Presidents, the average size of the deficit is $173.9 billion.
Here’s another interesting fact. Here is the size of the deficit reduction over the President’s term. (Taking the size of the deficit inherited from the previous president to the last budget signed. E.G. Bush Jr inherited a $128 billion surplus from Clinton and left office with a $1.4 TRILLION deficit – totalling $1.5 trillion deficit increase.)
Again. The last Republican president to reduce the DEFICIT (not the debt … rather, the SIZE of the deficit) was Eisenhower. In the past 50 years, ALL Republican presidents have ACCELERATED deficit spending. On the other hand, the ONLY Democratic president to increase the size of the deficit (counting Kennedy/Johnson as one administration for obvious reasons) was Carter … who increased the deficit by less than 1/2 the increase of his predecessor and by 1/4 of the increase of following president.
There are holes in what I’m presenting here, obviously. I may bring this up again when I can nail down a couple more things (like party control of Congress.) But as of now, it’s pretty clear that Democratic presidents have a MUCH better track record of fiscal responsibility than Republican presidents. It’s not even close. I certainly won’t trust another Republican presidential candidate that talks about ‘fiscal responsibility’.
Randy is a nomad 
Love this info. I will make our family Christmas card!
This info means nothing unless you consider which party controlled the legislature during these presidential terms. For example, when the Democrats regained a Congressional majority following the 2006 elections, Federal deficit as a percentage of GDP rose from 1% to 9.9%. Then it rose to 10.6% after Obama’s election. Likewise, when Republicans regained the majority in Congress from 1995-2000, that percentage dropped from 1.4% to -2.4%.
Your objection was previously noted in the main text above. It doesn’t change the hypocrisy of Republican Presidents talking tough about fiscal responsibility and completely ignoring deficits during their terms as president.