6123

Of course the taxes he raised were Social Security, which only working people pay, while the rich got to keep their ridiculous tax cut.

6124

Something about this rings a bell…

6125

It’s probably worth considering who was in Congress during those periods of time, since they have more control over the budget than the president.

I mean, the Republicans in Congress were there ones who actually balanced the budget.

6126

Keep fucking that chicken.

6127

Oh, well clearly I hadn’t considered that point.

6128

And that Republican’s name? John “Ice Cream Forker” Kasich

6129

Because it’s fucking hilarious.

6130

Yet the Democrats were in charge of Congress for 40 years before the Gingrich revolution occurred, and during that time the debt declined steadily every single year until Reagan showed up. Who was responsible for that decline? Tax-and-spend liberals?

It’s certainly true Gingrich used Reagan’s deficits as a lever with which to attack social services spending in the US, but I don’t think any reasoning person believes it was out of some sense of responsibility. Newt Gingrich?

6131

Obama also was getting the deficit under control while preventing the 2nd Great depression. He had the hardest job of any president since FDR, and he did as well as he could have.

6132

And you had Republican presidents during that period, too. Dude, Congress controls the spending. That’s how it works. It’s just more complex than your simplistic graph makes it out to be.

It’s naive at best, and intentionally intellectually dishonest at worst, to try to lay things like the national debt in the feet of presidents.

Under Reagan, the Democrats controlled Congress. Every spending bill came from Tip ONeil. Hell, the first Bush largely lost his reelection because he agreed to raise taxes, specifically because of his fiscal conservatism. He actually thought we needed to pay for our stuff. And under Clinton again, the Republican Congress absolutely did walk the walk when it came to fiscal conservatism. They actually balanced the budget.

You can’t just say, “they never cared about it”, because they clearly did. They actually acted on those principles once upon a time.

They certainly don’t care about those things NOW, but that graph is, at best, revisionist.

6133

And, of course, the president can veto an appropriation. Which stands unless Congress can override it, so they kind of need the executive go along with what’s proposed. Seems fair to blame both branches. It’s more complex than your simplistic refutation makes it out to be ;)

6134

Of course, and other factors make it a ridiculous graph anyway.

I mean, there’s nothing a president can do that would cause some major shift immediately upon taking office.

And finally, the government doesn’t control GDP. It can effect the economy, but if you are measuring the debt as a percentage of the GDP, then things like recessions matter. In addition to the budget work by the Republican Congress in the second portion of Clinton’s term, the other factor that helped reduce debt as a percentage of GDP is that our economy was growing very quickly at the time.

6135

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 was sponsored by two Republicans: Conservatives Jack Kemp and William Roth. It cut top marginal tax rates which produced a slump in government revenues and ballooned the deficit. Fiscal conservatism.

Other than irresponsibly cutting top marginal tax rates by 40%?

6136

Yes, it was sponsored by the Republicans. What I meant was that it came from O’Neill because the Democrats controlled the house. Hell, in actuality, they controlled BOTH houses of Congress at the time.

6137

So Republicans drafted a bill which would balloon the deficit while rewarding the wealthy, and Republicans sponsored the bill, and a Republican President signed the bill, and that means those Republicans cared about the deficit and were fiscally responsible, and anyway it’s all Tip O’Neill’s fault for giving them most of what they wanted. Got it.

6138

No, it’s not all the Democrats fault EITHER. But it passed overwhelmingly in a democratically controlled house and Senate, with a margin of 323 to 107 in the house.

Real governance isn’t something done by just one party, and only partisan hacks try to pretend otherwise.

6139

It seems to me that lots of real governance got done from e.g. 1933-1947. There are many periods of single-party rule in American history, and I don’t rule out that it was effective governance whichever party was in power.

My problem is this: Where is the evidence that US Conservatives in the post-war era ever cared for fiscal responsibility, or defined fiscal responsibility as low deficits? It is widely recognized that the Conservative Presidencies have been disasters for the deficit. If you say that doesn’t really count as evidence, and I grant that; and if you say my chart is silly and simplistic, and I grant that too; then where can we look for the evidence?

6140

They literally ran on balancing the budget, and then actually did it.

6141

…and then used that balanced budget as a rationale to cut taxes on the wealthy again, and blew up the budget again. It begins to look like a strategy, wherein what they really care about is cutting taxes on the wealthy.

The Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House in 2001, and they used that power to destroy the budget. These were to a great extent the same politicians who had come to power with Gingrich, right?

6142

So just to be clear, you are moving the goalposts.