Background
I hate arguing politics on the Innert00bs, but sometimes I just can't resist:My oh so polite reply:
Glenn Stehle,
Did you miss the part back in 1971 when Nixon proclaimed, “We’re all Keynesians now?”ROFL, did you miss the part where every Democrat President since Nixon ran a lower deficit than his Republican predecessor?
Not strictly true in Obama's case as we will see, but in his first year in office he did still manage to somewhat eat into the shitburger that he inherited from W. Bush. But before we get into a more detailed and representative look at things, two charming replies to my little note:
Peter Lang,
Here’s how Obama is doing.
You’ll have to excuse brandonrgates.
I think we know from his hisory of comments on this forum that he lives in a fact-free world, being completely blinded to factual reality by his partisanship and other biases.
Well good old Glenn got one thing right this time, he posted a plot showing the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP. What he fouled up is that the 8.3% deficit is how Obama WAS doing ... in his first term. It also includes the 9.8% deficit that Dubya rang up in the FY 2009 budget. I'm not going to go through the brain damage of tagging Bush with his own tax cuts, which were on the books even as Obama was doing the FY 2010 budget.
The Nitty-Gritty
What I did do in the interest of parity to Glenn's plot is trot over to the White House Office of Management and Budget website for the current and historical numbers, which go all the way back to 1930 in some cases. Here's how Obama looks through FY 2016 compared to his predecessors all the way back to Herbert Hoover:
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| Figure 1 - Budget Deficit/(Surplus) by year and President as a percentage of GDP through FY 2016, including both on and off budget items. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when the budget was written, and by whom. Source: White House Office of Management and Budget Table 1.2. |
For the record, through FY 2016, Obama has run an average budget deficit of 5.2% of GDP. If we include FY 2017, that year's deficit is an estimated 2.6% of GDP (which hopefully Hillary, not Donald will inherit), bringing his average down to 4.9%.
Yes, both figures are the highest on record since FDR. Like FDR, he inherited an economy that went pear-shaped on his Republican predecessor's watch. Like FDR, he had two wars going on during his time in office. Unlike FDR, he wasn't in office when either of those wars started.
Unlike W. Bush, FDR went to war with a true international coalition of our allies to actually preserve our freedoms. But I digress.
Point is, I think we can forgive Obama for running up the tab a bit given what he's had to deal with.
More noteworthy, if we look at the post-FDR track record of presidents by political party -- including Obama -- Democrats have averaged budget deficits of 1.6% GDP whereas the Republican tally sits at 2.6%.
Some will of course insist that we must blame FDR for the monstrosity of an entitlement program that is Social Security. My answer to them is that Republicans have had 80 years since 1935 to unload it, but haven't. Old people vote too, and the AARP is not an organization most politicians want to piss off. And besides, taking care of their elderly is something responsible adults do. But again I digress.
I noticed something else staring at that plot for a while: with the exception of Reagan, it looks like every Republican since and including Hoover has increased the budget deficit during their time in office, whilst Dems look to either decrease it or hold it steady. To better visualize that, I ginned up this plot from the same data:
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| Figure 2 - Budget Deficit/(Surplus) year over year change by President as a percentage of GDP through FY 2016, including both on and off budget items. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when the budget was written, and by whom. Source: White House Office of Management and Budget Table 1.2. |
Yup, you're reading that correctly -- JFK is the only Democrat since FDR to increase the deficit during his time in office. Carter and Reagan broke even, and Ike reduced the deficit during his two terms. Every other Republican president increased the deficit during his term in office. We might give Nixon and Ford a pass for having to clean up JFK and Johnson's Vietnam debacle.
That leaves the father-son team of H. W. "read my lips" Bush and W. "Saddam tried to kill my Daddy" Bush. I maintain that history will remain kinder to Bush the Elder.
But the main point here is, yeah, Obama ran up record post-FDR deficits; however, he knocked them down every year until FY 2016. But even that bump up is on par in absolute terms with Reagan and the two Bushes.
"Welllll ..." says my cost-conscious friends across the great partisan divide, "Democraps have lower deficits because they tax the hell out of everyone." Ok, let's take a look at that:
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| Figure 3 - Budget Receipts by year and President as a percentage of GDP through FY 2016, including both on and off budget items. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when the budget was written, and by whom. Source: White House Office of Management and Budget Table 1.2. |
In absolute terms between the parties, it's about a dead heat, with post-FDR Dems edging out Repubs in terms of dipping into our wallets. Bush II and Obama are also tied, with one clear difference: GWB slashed taxes whilst BHO undid the cuts. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say he managed to get the Congrisscritters to let them expire -- my memory on this is hazy and I'm too tired and lazy to look it up.
There's another clear pattern, Dems tend to raise taxes in office, Repubs tend to undo them and hold them steady or decrease them. There's a plot for that:
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| Figure 4 - Budget Receipts year over year change by President as a percentage of GDP through FY 2016, including both on and off budget items. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when the budget was written, and by whom. Source: White House Office of Management and Budget Table 1.2. |
Pretty unambiguous difference. So that's the tax part of Tax and Spend. So let's look at spend:
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| Figure 5 - Budget Outlays by year and President as a percentage of GDP through FY 2016, including both on and off budget items. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when the budget was written, and by whom. Source: White House Office of Management and Budget Table 1.2. |
King Hussein Obama just slightly edges out Saint Reagan for being the most spendy. However, post-FDR Democrats have been thriftier than Republicans. And there's something else ... is it just me, or do Democrats look to have a habit of decreasing, NOT increasing, spending while in office? Let's look:
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| Figure 6 - Budget Outlays year over year change by President as a percentage of GDP through FY 2016, including both on and off budget items. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when the budget was written, and by whom. Source: White House Office of Management and Budget Table 1.2. |
Because of the wild fluctuations during the Great Depression/WWII years the scaling makes it more difficult to see, but even including FDR, Democrats don't tend to ramp spending as much as Republicans do. Bonkers, I know. Ford and Bush II are the main offenders in the post-FDR era. But the real story of this plot for me is that both B. Clinton and B. Obama reduced spending while in office.
And as we have seen in Figure 2, both most recent Democratic presidents also reduced the deficit while in office. Clinton managed to run a surplus, which obviously Obama has not ... however, Obama on average did about half as much more deficit reduction than Clinton.
Funny how climate contrarians fixate on absolutes when rate of change tells an equally, if not more, important story -- even when doing partisan economics. Color me shocked.
If I've learned anything from this exercise, it's these two things:
- Republican presidents like spending as much as Democrats.
- Democrats try to fund their programs, Republicans not so much.
But Wait ... There's MOAR
... for I have not yet begun to fight -- however, I'll endeavor to keep it short: |
| Figure 7 - Real GDP year over year growth rate by President as a percentage of GDP through FY 2016. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when fiscal policies were set, and by whom. Source: White House Office of Management and Budget Table 10.1. |
Obama's performance is toward the bottom, he's also at the tail-end of a long-term decline in GDP growth rate since the end of the Great Depression, and the economic boom that happened during and following WWII. Post-FDR, Dems edge out Repubs on average for year-on-year GDP growth. Including FDR (and Hoover), it's no contest. Apparently Tax 'n Spend is not the Economy Killer it's chalked up to be. And just as apparently Trickle Down Tax Cut and Still Spend is not all that and a bag of chips either.
Let's look at how that translates to unemployment rate:
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| Figure 8 - Unemployment rate by President through FY 2016. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when fiscal policies were set, and by whom. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. |
It's a dead heat when including Hoover and FDR during the Great Depression era. Post-New Deal, Dems edge out Repubs. And there's another pattern; it appears that Democrats tend to reduce unemployment while in office, whereas for Republicans it's a mixed bag. So here's the change plot:
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| Figure 9 - Unemployment rate year over year change by President through FY 2016. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when fiscal policies were set, and by whom. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. |
Pre- or post-FDR, it doesn't matter. It's not even close. It's downright embarrassing -- Reagan is the ONLY Republican president to reduce unemployment while he was in office. Truman is the ONLY Democratic president to have sat during an increase in unemployment, but at less than half the rate of the "best" performing non-Reagan Republican.
And look at what Truman had to deal with -- a labor market which had transitioned during wartime into a more gender-equal workforce suddenly flooded by returning GIs and meeting up with many women who rightfully were loath to go back to letting men be the sole breadwinners.
We might give Ike a similar pass, especially given that toward the end of his tenure the Baby Boomers were getting old enough to work, and thus old enough to be counted in the unemployment stats -- thus representing another sort of glut in labor. Don't take my word for it, I'm guessing ... and again I'm too tired and lazy to look it up.
What's another easy economic indicator. Oh, here's one near and dear to my heart -- home ownership:
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| Figure 10 - Home ownership rate by President through FY 2016. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when fiscal policies were set, and by whom. Source: I forgot where I grabbed this, but it looked legit -- I'll do an update when I'm awake enough to trace it back down. Pre-1960 were estimates made before better records were kept. |
Oh noes! Dems lose. For Obama, well, we can blame Dubya for letting the subprime mortgage business get out of hand, exacerbated by Greenspan et al. for not sooner waking up to the fact that buying risky debt from loan originators and securitizing it to "spread the risk" is a double plus ungood idea. It would be asking a bit much of the real estate market to walk off that bubble burst in less than a decade.
See that dip in the 1980s? You're not imagining it; the housing market -- especially the new homes market -- was shitty then too, albeit for different reasons. High interest rates is a big one.
But again, looking at absolutes may be deceiving. Let's check out the year-on-year change in home ownership rate:
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| Figure 11 - Home ownership rate year over year change by President through FY 2016. Fiscal years are offset by one year to better reflect when fiscal policies were set, and by whom. Source: I forgot where I grabbed this, but it looked legit -- I'll do an update when I'm awake enough to trace it back down. Pre-1960 were estimates made before better records were kept. |
With FDR literally in the house and Hoover sucking the rug, Republicans get seal-clubbed. Post-FDR it's almost a contest, but there again Dems look to increase home ownership at double the rate of Republicans. Obama takes one for the team on this metric.
Yabbut, "everyone" knows the housing market is cyclical, right? Any hard-core free-markets-can-do-no-wrong types reading this far are likely saying that the Dems have just gotten lucky. After all the other (un)popular myths about economy-killing Democrats I've just crapped on in this post, I couldn't say I can blame them much for being a tad grouchy.
I have more, but am seriously too hashed to write another word. So I'll end here, and maybe do a Part 2 with whatever other data I can cherry pick in the finest tradition of partisan stats bashing.
Until then, remember: Friends don't let friends vote for Trump.
Goodnight, and good luck.
