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Considering that the President does not run the nation by executive fiat (the experience of President Cheney notwithstanding) I would like to see a couple of other graphs – one showing what party controlled each house of Congress over those years, and one showing where Congress and the President shared a party. I think this graph only tells part of the story.
True enough, in part, David. And I do not forgive the Democrats of the time who did not oppose Reagan and Bush Sr. budgets, all too eager to play along. But if you’ll look carefully at that 2001-2008 time period (including after the 2006 midterm, when the Democrat “majority” was stifled by a working conservative majority thanks to Pelosi/Reid’s lack of leadership). For those years, the graph does tell the whole story, and these are the same Republicans who’ve suddenly remembered the federal deficit in opposition to a Democratic administration.
Perspective is everything, especially when filtering the daily news.
I don’t think I buy the line that the Democratic majority was stifled by a working conservative majority from 2006 to 2008. I’m not sure we ever had more than a handful of real fiscal conservatives before 2006 let alone after.
The full story seems to be that for the last 30 years Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has never seriously tried to control their spending except when the Republicans did it as a political talking point against the Democratic president. The Democrats since 2006 have not talked about reductions in spending except for ending our military overreach.
David, you’re missing the point. Democrats (other than Blue Dogs) don’t run as “conservatives.” Even if I give you the working conservative majority (which I don’t, as it was obvious to see playing out to my nearly daily frustration ’06 to ’08… War funding debate alone is example enough… and actually working “conservative” majority is a misnomer, working “Republican” majority is more accurate), that still doesn’t account for 2001-2005, and that these representatives are those same representatives. To say it more plainly, when we see them on TeeVee whining about the deficit as reason to oppose the White House, no one should be taking them seriously. Or even listening, for that matter.
Until they stop assuming the American people are stupid, and learn how to use The Google to remember their own recent history, Republicans are in the woods.
There i totally agree with you. I was not trying to excuse the glaring incongruity between what Republican Congressmen are saying now and what they have been doing for the last decade.
I’m just afraid that the graph might have the effect of lulling the electorate into believing that the Democrats are going to be wise in their fiscal approach – they’re not dependably better than the “borrow and spend” Republicans.
And my fear would be that not enough people see this graph and therefore assume that the Republican fiscal approach since 1980 has been beneficial to our economy.
In the long run, the only viable fiscal approach is for the government to spend no more than they take in – a concept lost on both parties apparently.