who cuts spending for real?
interesting read before election, Our nation began its existence in debt from the Revolutionary War. Jefferson argued to eliminate the debt, and Hamilton argued it was necessary to keep the nation together. The Hamiltonians won, the conservatives of their time, and consequently it has also been argued that this difference between these two founders was the beginning of the liberal/conservative split in our country.
Figure 2 shows that we keep that original debt until the Jackson administration. Jackson did not believe in debt, or banks for that matter, and he made a real effort to eliminate all federal debt. He got it down to $18,000 just before leaving office. As you can see there has not been another serious attempt to reduce the debt significantly since then. It is clear that debt increases from every major war, and it’s equally clear to see that the debt is hardly ever reduced. Even when it is reduced it ain’t by much, or for very long. This obvious fact seems to be overlooked by the folks that tell us they want to reduce your taxes and shrink government – every time they increase the debt it is forever, because this nation does not pay its debt off, ever!
Since 1938 the Democrats have held the White house for 35 years, the Republicans for 36. Over that time the national debt has increased at an average annual rate of 8.5%. In years Democrats were in the White House there was an average increase of 8.3%. In years the Republicans ran the White House the debt increased an average 9.2% per year. Those averages aren’t that far apart, but they do show a bias toward more borrowing by Republicans than Democrats even including World War II.
If you look at the 60+ year record of debt since the end of WWII, starting with Truman’s term, the difference between the two parties’ contributions to our national debt level change considerably. Since 1946, Democratic presidents increased the national debt an average of only 3.2% per year. The Republican presidents stay at an average increase of 9.2% per year. Republican Presidents out borrowed and spent Democratic presidents by a three to one ratio. Putting that in very real terms; for every dollar a Democratic president has raised the national debt in the past 63 years Republican presidents have raised the debt by $2.84[URL="http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm#_ftn5"][5][/URL].
Prior to the Neo-Conservative takeover of the Republican Party there was not much difference between the two parties’ debt philosophy. They both worked together to minimize it. However the debt has been on a steady incline ever since the Reagan presidency. The only exception to the steep increase over the last 30 years was during the Clinton presidency, when he brought spending under control and the debt growth down to almost zero.
Comparing the borrowing habits of the two parties since 1981, when the Neo-Conservative movement really took hold and government spending raced out of control, it is extremely obvious that the big spenders inWashington are Republicans and their party’s presidents. The only Democratic president since then, Mr. Clinton raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year. The Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush II) raised the debt an average of 10.8% per year. That is, for every dollar a Democratic President has raised the national debt in the past 30 years, Republican presidents have raised the debt by $2.52[URL="http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm#_ftn6"][6][/URL]. Any way you look at it Neo-Conservative Republican presidents cannot or will not control government spending.
For the first eighteen years after WW II, Truman (1945-53), Eisenhower (1953-61) and Kennedy (1961-63) all worked vigorously to keep spending under control. Of the seven years Truman was in office, the national debt came down in four. In 1946 & 7, with a Republican Congress for his first two years in office he brought down spending. The following year, with a Democratic Congress he reduced what was commonly called the “War Debt” again. Two of the eight years Eisenhower served as President saw debt reduction during the years when Democrats were in charge of Congress, 1956 & 7. Kennedy reduced the debt by over 4% his first year in office, 1961, then it went up slightly his next two years. JFK was dealing with a Democratically controlled House and Senate when he managed to reduce the debt.
[B]Since 1961 the United States national debt has never gone down.[/B]
It is interesting to note who controlled Congress versus what party was in the presidency during the seven years that the debt was reduced throughout the terms of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. Three times the Democratic Party controlled both Houses of Congress and the Presidency (1948, 1951 & 1961). The other four years all had a mix of control, with Republicans in the White House (1956 & 1957), in charge of Congress (1946 & 1947), but never both. At no time since 1945 when Republicans have been in total charge of both elected branches of government have they ever reduced spending. They talk about it a lot, but they never deliver.
While the debt did go up every year during Johnson’s time in office (1963-69), he was the last president before Clinton to submit a balanced budget, and Johnson did this during a time of a very hot Cold War. Johnson’s average was a debt increase of 3% for the six years he served. He had a Democratic Congress to work with all his years in office.
Even Nixon (President from 1969 to 1974, when he resigned in disgrace) only had one year when he raised the debt more than 6%, 1971. His average was 5% for the six years he was in office. Between uncontrolled inflation and Ford’s conservative bend the debt increased 17% his first full year in office (1975), and 13% his second (1976). Ford’s plan to impose a policy of price controls failed to bring government overspending and inflation under control. Both these Presidents faced an opposition Congress controlled by Democrats during their time in office.
Starting in 1977 President Carter tried to control government spending even during inflationary times. The national debt increased an average of 9% per year while he was in office, and his policies eventually brought inflation under control with the help of a semi-cooperative Democratic Congress. He was thrown out of office after one term for making and implementing the hard decisions required to cut spending and deal with the energy crisis. (Had we followed his policies all these years we would not be dependant on foreign oil as we are now under Republican leadership.)
As President Reagan entered office in 1981 he repeatedly called for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, yet never submitted a balanced budget himself[URL="http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm#_ftn7"][7][/URL]. Many on the right reflexively blame the Democratically controlled Congress for the “big spending” during his administration, even though Republicans controlled the Senate for the first six years of his two terms. Only during the last two years of the Reagan administration was the Congress completely controlled by Democrats, and the records show that the growth of the debt slowed during this period. It appears that the frequently referenced Reagan’s Conservative mythology is contrary to the truth, he was an award winning, record setting liberal spender and government grower.
The fact is that Reagan was able to push his tax cuts through both Houses of Congress, but he never pushed through any reduced spending programs. His weak leadership in this area makes him directly responsible for the unprecedented rise in borrowing during his time in office, an average of 13.8% per year. The increase in total debt during Reagan’s two terms was larger than all the debt accumulated by all the presidents before him combined. From 1983 through 1985, with a Republican Senate, the debt was increasing at over 17% per year. While Mr. Reagan was in office this nation’s debt went from just under 1 trillion dollars to over 2.6 trillion dollars, a 200% increase. The sad part about this increase is that it was not to educate our children, or to improve our infrastructure, or to help the poor, or even to finance a war. Reagan’s enormous increase in the national debt was not to pay for any noble cause at all; his primary unapologetic goal was to pad the pockets of the rich. The huge national debt we have today is a living legacy to his failed Neo-Conservative economic policies. Reagan’s legacy is a heavy financial weight that continues to apply an unrelenting drag on this nation’s economic resources.
George Bush Sr. meekly followed in Reagan’s shadow after his election in 1988, by increasing the debt on average a mere 11.8% a year during his four years as President. In his last year in office he quite responsibly worked with Democrats to raise taxes to help reduce the massive yearly increases in the national debt. This bipartisan plan got the growth down to under 11% in 1992, but it was too little too late and didn’t make much difference in the overall trend. The Neo-Conservatives controlling the Republican Party rewarded him for putting the nation’s future above his party’s ideology by throwing him out of office even though it had hardly been a year since he was credited with winning the Gulf War.
In 1993 President Clinton inherited the deficit spending problem and did more than just talk about it; he fixed it. In his first two years, with a cooperative Democratic Congress, he set the course for the best economy this country has ever experienced. Then he worked with what could be characterized as the most hostile Congress in history, led by Republicans for the last six years of his administration. Yet, under constant personal attacks from the right, he still managed to get the growth of the debt down to 0.32% (one third of one percent) his last year in office. Had his policies been followed for one more year the debt would have been reduced for the first time since the Kennedy administration. Contrary to the myth fostered by our right-wing friends, under a Democrat, revenue increased and spending decreased.
When President Bush II came into office in 2001 he quickly turned all that progress around. With the help of a Republican controlled Congress he immediately gave a massive tax cut based on a failed economic policy; perhaps an economic fantasy describes it better. The last year Mr. Clinton was in office the nation borrowed 18 billion dollars. The first year Mr. Bush II was in office he had to borrow 133 billion[URL="http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm#_ftn8"][8][/URL]. The first tax cut Bush pushed through a willing Republican Congress caused an upswing in government borrowing that was supposed to stimulate the economy, but two years later Bush had to push through yet another tax cut. The second tax cut was needed because it was clear that the first one did not work. Economic history tells us the second did not work either. As a result of all his tax cutting with no cutting in spending, in 2003 President Bush set a record for the biggest single yearly dollar increase in debt in the nation’s history. He did it again in 2004, increasing the debt more than half a trillion dollars. Since 2003 total borrowing has typically been around $500,000,000,000 per year. Even Mr. Reagan never increased the debt that much in a single year; Mr. Reagan’s biggest increase was only 282 billion, half of GWB’s outrageous spending. As a result of the fact that the debt was already pretty high when Bush II entered office, his annual rate of increase is only averaging 7% per year so far. In 2006 he was holding press conferences bragging that the debt was increasing at the rate of only 300 billion dollars a year, yet in reality it was twice that. Again the facts do not match Neo-Con rhetoric.
Of course 7% growth is a misleading figure as it does not make clear that by so drastically increasing the total debt, the amount of the annual US budget dedicated to service the debt has grown to almost 10%. Thanks to misguided Neo-Con ideological thinking, over a tenth of our budget does nothing to contribute to the growth or health of the nation. If interest rates go up our country will be in real trouble.
It does not matter if you call it a war or an occupation, supporting Iraq is expensive. It just boggles the imagination of any fiscally responsible person that the Republican Congress and President have repeatedly cut taxes during this overly aggressive and very expensive era for our military. The nation is borrowing money so that we can spend more on our military than all the other nations on Earth combined, and still the Neo-Cons are calling for even more tax cuts and even more military spending.
Mr. Bush is constantly claiming that the economy is great! What he leaves out is that he is buying that simulated good economy with his borrowed dollars; it is a false economy that is starting to crash. Recent bank and insurance company failures are proving that this federal borrowing can not go on forever, but what is the answer we are being given to this problem – borrow more money to cover the bad debt already out there! If a Democrat was suggesting this course of action you can bet a bevy of Republicans would be screaming in unison that Congress is Socializing Wall Street.
