heywood on 28/12/2023 at 14:22

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Overgeneralizing my experience:

Democrat President + Democratic Majority in the House = big spending programs and big deficits
Democrat President + Republican Majority in the House = budget standoffs and deficit reduction
Republican President + Republican Majority in the House = big tax cuts and big deficits
Republican President + Democratic Majority in the House = nobody talks about the deficit because everybody is getting something

lowenz on 30/12/2023 at 14:54

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Thieves lover?

heywood on 30/12/2023 at 16:13

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You can't include 2020 and 2021 in any budget comparison because of the COVID pandemic. And you have to exclude WWII for similar reasons.

Pre-pandemic, 2019 was a relatively spendy year after Democrats took back the House. The deficit grew to -4.6% of GDP, the biggest it had been since Democrats last controlled the House in 2012. Prior to that, Trump's first two years with a Republican Congress yielded the biggest tax cut since Reagan.

The biggest deficits, not counting WWII and COVID, occurred in 2009-2012 during the first Obama administration, when Democrats had Congress. There was a Republican Congress during his second term, and the result was contracting deficits until Trump.

The first half of the GWB administration also seems to follow my rule. Clinton handed him a +2.3% GDP budget surplus, and by 2004 he and the Republican Congress had turned that into a -3.4% GDP deficit, thanks to an across-the-board tax cut and military expansion. But the end of his administration breaks my rule, because they were throwing the brakes on to stop the housing bubble.

The Clinton administration is the best example I have of long term austerity. It started out as a mild reduction of fiscal stimulus as the country recovered from the savings & loan crisis, but turned into a government cutting exercise after Republicans won Congress in 1994, leading to the surplus.

In 1990, GHWB and a Democratic Congress passed a law ending the deficit control measures inherited from the Reagan administration. The deficit then grew to 4.4% in 1991 and 4.5% in 1992, which is the highest it had been since 1986 and the highest it would be until 2009. But nobody was talking about the deficits then. Bush lost Republican voters because they read his lips and he raised taxes.

The second biggest deficits occurred in 1982-1986 during the Reagan administration, when Democrats had the House but Republicans had the Senate. This one bends my rule, which I need to explain. The Reagan administration fell within the 40 years span that Democrats continually controlled the House. Back then the Democratic party still had a lot of southern and midwestern conservatives in it, and there were many Democrats in the House representing districts that voted for Reagan. So the House was more of a neutral body than you might assume. When Republicans won the Senate in 1980 on Reagan's coat tails, that broke a 26 year streak of Democratic Party control of that body and flipped ideological control of the Congress to Reagan's side. All of the conservative policy making happened in the first six years when he had a Republican Senate. His last two years in office with a Democratic Senate saw moderate deficits return, around 3%.

Carter breaks my rule. His administration is the glaringly obvious exception. Ford's brief tenure with a Democratic Congress yielded big deficits to counter the effects of the first oil shock. He pumped up the economy and played up the US bicentennial for the 1976 elections, but lost anyway. Carter's years are relatively austere considering the economy was falling into a recession.

If you go back further, Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs grew the deficit from -0.2% GDP to -2.7% GDP, which doesn't seem like a lot now, but it was seen as huge back then when balanced budgets were expected.

The only two periods of surplus since WWII happened during the late 40s and the late 90s. Both of these periods had Democratic Presidents and Republicans controlling Congress. It's also worth noting the net change in both periods came mostly from military force reductions. The "peace dividend" is real.

Source:
(https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306) https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306

Nicker on 9/1/2024 at 06:03

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Follow up to the above.

Jesse Dollemore reveals additional details about the Gawd Maid Rump video, introducing the coming soon to an FBI watch list near you creator of that abomination, Brenden Dilley.

[video=youtube;4hGXJz6H8HA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hGXJz6H8HA[/video]

RippedPhreak on 16/1/2024 at 14:13

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Haley and DeSantis are just establishment Democrats, essentially. No one cares about them.