So now we know…
"CHANGE" =
MORE Debt
In the last 40+ years in this country, the only president that has run with a balanced budget (or a surplus!) was Clinton. Now, normally I would say that the congress has as much, or more, control over the budget of the country however I will point out a few things that have happened that - to me - seem to point at the Republicans as the source of the debt, not the Democrats (I'm using OMB numbers for Gross Federal Debt, some people use the public held debt instead):
1) I've heard it said that Carter started our modern deficit spending. I'm not sure the why's of that statement, since we've had a federal debt since before Carter. I think it has to do with the techniques behind the budget tricks used to fund programs in the absence of actual funds. Still, Carter's administration overall contributed very little to our modern debt comparatively. (It went from about $0.5 trillion to $0.9 trillion.)
2) Reagan's administration saw a huge amount (historically speaking at the time) of deficit spending. By 1988 the federal debt was approximately $2.6 trillion. Reagan nearly quadrupled the national debt. The blame for this I feel rests entirely on Republican shoulders due to the increase in military spending. Regardless of the justification here, the fact is that it started us on our way to a massive debt.
3) Bush Sr. didn't do too much as a president with regards to the debt one way or another. Status quo you could say... with a rather amusing foot-in-mouth moment with the "No new taxes" speech. We all say silly things at times, I suppose. At the end of the Bush Presidency the national debt was over $4 trillion.
4) During Clinton's administration he spent a lot of work trying to balance the budget. At the end of 8 years the debt was at $5.6 trillion. In other words, Clinton added about as much in 8 years that Bush Sr. added in 4. In fact, when you look at the publicly held debt (as opposed to the Gross Federal Debt) the last 3 years of the Clinton presidency saw a drop in the total debt. The surplus that Clinton successfully maintained was passed in part during a Republican held congress by Clinton vetoing the budget multiple times until spending was finally cut enough to erase the yearly deficit.
5) One of the first things Bush W. did during his presidency was to eliminate many taxes that were supporting the national budget. This started deficit spending again. Then, by starting a war or two, Bush W. managed to vastly increase the debt. Like Reagan's administration, it doesn't matter much what the justification was, this is what happened. At the end of Bush W's presidency, the federal debt was just below $10 trillion. In the last few years, the debt has grown on average nearly $1 trillion per year. Remember, this was after Clinton handed him a balanced budget. At any point the Democrats tried
6) Now with Obama in office the Tea Part starts and accuses Obama of socialism and freaks out over Democrats being bad for the debt.
If you're read this far... can someone please explain to me how you can - with any reasonable historical accuracy - blame the Democrats for the National Debt?
I know... the classic joke is that Democrats are "Tax & Spend". Unfortunately, the Republicans cut the taxes that are supporting the government programs and then keep spending!
Taxes support government spending. You can't logically complain about the debt and complain about taxes unless you have a realistic plan to cut spending. Political pundits like to talk about cutting spending but they never actually do anything about it.
Unfortunately, you only have a few things you can cut.
1) Welfare programs (medicare, medicaid, etc) that many Americans rely on. Even the Republicans have recently shied away from making realistic cuts into these programs. Time and time again public polls have showed that "real" Americans are not interested in making cuts here.
2) Military spending that our military is... well... using. This might work if we weren't in a war currently (or two) and even then, it is also not supported by public opinion polls.
3) Pork barrel projects, earmarks, whatever you want to call them could be cut... which accounts for around 1-2% of the budget. We'd lose lots of cool programs and basically get nothing from it.
By the way... a number of people screamed socialism when Obama talked about raising taxes from 36% to 39%. I like Jon Stewart's question to a guest... "At what point in that 3% did it become socialism?" Also, it's worth noting that this the same tax rate that existed during Reagan's administration. Why was Reagan not considered a socialist at the time?
Why is it that the Tea Party and the Republicans complain about Democratic tax policies when in 2009 Americans paid the lowest effective tax rate that they've paid since 1955?
The email you sent a little while ago about the tax hike set for Jan 1st, 2011 is another interesting subject. I won't dwell on it other than to say that the Democrats are between a rock and a hard place on this one. The tax cuts that Republicans put in when they eliminated Clinton's balanced budget are set to expire (as they should) and now Democrats will be blamed for either allowing them to expire or - if they renew them - be blamed for increasing the national debt. Not an enviable position.
Um... what? While this may be true, I don't follow it much. Frankly, I don't think it's changed much. it was also amusing to see - during the health care debates - Republicans attacking health care because it might hurt welfare. That was funny.
Less regulation of the Financial industry tanked our economy. During that tanking nearly every analyst and senator agreed that we haven't regulated enough. When things started looking better, suddenly the pundits were against regulation again. Let's hear it for consistency.
The banks have proven that they need to be regulated. If not, the basic human greed takes over and too few people with too much power hurt too many innocent bystanders.
When the Department of Homeland Security was setup, they were put in charge of some new stuff (such as the TSA), but also given purview over some existing departments, like Border Security. The congressional committees that had already controlled those departments refused to relinquish control. When the 9/11 Commission gave their report, they pointed out that a since Homeland Security briefing would potentially need to be repeated to 86 committees and sub-committees.
Now, after a number of years of Republican control, the number of committees and sub-committees is over 110. That's not reigning in government.
Wasteful is, I suppose, in the eye on the beholder. At any rate, I'm not sure it's any worse now than it has been. Of course, many Republicans have complained about Obama wanting to spend money on public works projects. We have a failing infrastructure in this country... roads, bridges, dams, and causeways that are old and crumbling. Don't they think it's about time to fix some of this before more people die? Apparently not, since they can appear to be hard on spending by opposing those projects while we're hemorrhaging money in a war in a country that didn't even attack us. At least Obama is following through with those plans... even those they aren't as aggressive as I'd like.
