You’ve all heard the claims, that the problem in Washington is not a revenue problem but a spending problem. Republicans have successfully led many to believe that Democratic presidents have contributed the most to our national deficit. But there is something called the truth, and the truth cannot be denied especially when it’s backed up by statistics.
Here’s a look at the spending in this nation over the last 30+ years. Something Republicans refuse to comprehend.
Clinton pointed out that under Democratic presidents since 1961, the economy has added 42 million private-sector jobs, while under Republicans it has added just 24 million. He used the same concept to argue that President Obama has outscored both congressional Republicans and his GOP presidential opponent, Mitt Romney, in terms of creating jobs.
Clinton has some intriguing facts on his side. Aside from a rounding error, his historical numbers are accurate (figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the tally under Democrats since 1961 rounds to 41 million, not 42 million). I crunched the numbers a few different ways to see if Clinton was cherry-picking the best numbers. His figures measure job gains from the month a president took office until the month he left. Since it takes a year or so for any president’s policies to go into effect, I also measured job gains from one year after each president took office till one year after he left. Here’s the score by that measure: Democrats: 38 million new jobs, Republicans, 27 million.
Clinton only mentioned private-sector jobs, so I pulled the data for all jobs, including government. Again, the Dems have a big edge, accounting for 48 million new jobs, compared with 31 million for Republicans. If you push the boundaries out one year for each president, the gap narrows to 44 million new jobs under Democrats, and 34 million under Republicans.
Some will call it pure politics. Others will call it absolutely necessary in an economy where gas prices are skyrocketing. But no matter how you look at it, this new move by the Obama administration to try and bring down gas prices will be another opportunity for Republicans to bitch and moan that too much Wall Street regulations are coming out of the Obama White House.
In trying to influence the price Americans are paying at the pump, the President will call on Congress to:
– Boost spending on technology to improve better oversight and surveillance of energy markets.
– Increase by six times the money spent on surveillance and enforcement staff of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to better deter oil market manipulation.
– Increase from $1 million to $10 million civil and criminal penalties against firms that engage in market manipulation.
– In an effort designed to limit energy market disruptions, give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority to increase the amount of money that a trader must put up to back a trading position.
If Congress agree to these measures, gas prices may come down a notch. But don’t expect anything to get done in an election year when Republicans are looking for anything to blame on this President. And given that the President’s proposal has more regulations for Wall Street speculators, expect Republicans to use extra words and terms like socialization and class warfare to describe the president’s attempt to bring down gas prices.
Something we already knew, but now the record proves it. Republican presidents run up debts, while Democratic presidents try to reduce it.
This is in stark contrast to the ideology constantly being drilled into our heads by the media and the Republican party, that conservatives are for fiscal discipline. If this is true, the conservatives who become president must leave their ‘discipline’ at the door of the White House.
According to the report,
Economist Mike Kimel notes that the last five Democratic Presidents (Clinton, Carter, LBJ, JFK, and Truman) all reduced public debt as a share of GDP, while the last four Republican Presidents (GW Bush, GHW Bush, Reagan, and Ford) all oversaw an increase in the country’s indebtedness.
Similarly, Republican David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, as op-ed contributor to the New York Times blamed the “ideological tax-cutters” of the Reagan administration for the increase of national debt during the 1980s.
Looking back, this trend was not always the case. Yesteryear’s Republican Presidents once had focused on bringing down the national debt, but something changed right around the time Reagan got into office. See the chart below;
So next time these conservatives talk about “deficit reduction” and “cutting the budget,” maybe they should consider whose policies increased the national debt to where it is today. They should also consider educating their next presidential candidate, and beg that candidate to maintain their so-called “conservatism” if they manage to cross the threshold of the White House.
