I had a bit of insomnia last night and produced this fine reenactment of old-school blogging:
This chart shows the change in federal spending during every postwar administration.¹ For example, Eisenhower's first budget clocked in at 18.14% of GDP while his final budget set spending at 17.38% of GDP. So over the course of his administration spending declined by 0.76 percentage points.
Add this up across the years and Republicans have increased spending levels by 5 percentage points. Democrats have reduced spending levels by 3 percentage points.
Since the mid-50s, federal spending has roughly increased from 16% of GDP to 20% of GDP. Over the next decade or two this will almost certainly have to increase to about 25% of GDP.
¹I didn't include Truman's enormous spending cuts because they were merely the result of the end of World War II. Likewise, I didn't include Trump's enormous increases because they were a bipartisan response to the COVID emergency.
One way to look at it is that Democrats keep getting suckered. Increased spending is good for the economy, so Republicans generally support it when they are in power and do their best to block it when they aren't.
A good point. The right wing thinks ahead ... or used to.
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It would be interesting to see the other side of the budget coin: how federal income changes in Dem vs Rep administrations. And add the two to see how the deficit and debt change.
My guess: “Tax and spend” is not an accurate nickname for the Democrats. But “Borrow and squander” IS accurate for the GOP.
Yup, but Dems are more interested in being "civil" than in setting the narrative and winning.
With Obama, spending went down AND we got Obamacare.
With Republicans, what did we get with their spending? More jails and less security?
Demographics mean Social Security, etc., payments will keep going up:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/217654/outlays-for-social-security-and-forecast-in-the-us-as-a-percentage-of-the-gdp/
see also: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58564
Now: how much of the difference is due to contextual policy advocacy by the media?
I think you need to better explain your figures, Kevin. According to the OMB data I downloaded (https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/ table 1.1) Federal outlays under Clinton increased from $1.4 trillion to $1.8 trillion (FY 1993 to FY 2000). Were you claiming inflation-adjusted spending? Or perhaps spending as a percent of GDP?
Yes, it's quite clearly percentage of GDP. For instance "For example, Eisenhower's first budget clocked in at 18.14% of GDP while his final budget set spending at 17.38% of GDP. So over the course of his administration spending declined by 0.76 percentage points."
I'm sure you're right, but the figures don't match Table 1.2 (outlays, receipts, and deficit as percent of GDP) either, for any years that are reasonably close to the opening and closing of any administration.
A little explanation, please.
Looks like Kevin is using the years of their budgets are in effect. So Obama was elected in 2008, inaugurated in 2009, with Bush's last budget in place, and his first budget was for 2010. At least that's close.
That means the 2008 banking crises, with jump in Gov't spending in 2009, hit Bush, not Obama. But that does miss jump in spending between administrations. Alternatively you can use the inauguration year budgets for both the start and stop. Kevin might have been using higher resolution data, i.e. month to month???
Not sure what to make of "off budget" spending--but I still looked at total spending
So, Obama's 2009 stimulus counts against Bush? Bush counts as increasing spending because his last year included the bottom of a deep recession, thus decreasing GDP?
Kevin's usually above petty hackery like this.
FY 2009 Budget was passed in September 2008 so nope it's not "Obama" it's Bush & the Democratically controlled Congress. Go read up on PPBE, the Federal fiscal year begins on October 1st, so this current budget year started on October 1st 2022.
Don't accuse someone of hackery if you don't have the faintest idea of how things work.
It’d be a lot more tedious but possibly more informative to make it 2 year groupings by political party of President+congress, with congress being broken into D,R,Split
The fundamental question in politics is directional. What is the candidates strategy? Is it "divide and conquer" or is it "what can we do for our country?" The later is good for the economy and everything else, and the former is bad for the economy and everything else.
The Republican Party has gotten very good at making very bad decisions and convincing everyone that the Democrats are to blame.
A fairly meaningless exercise, with respect. Disregard Bush as an outlier and the picture is very different, therefore it's invalid to suggest "Republicans" tend to increasae spending more. It would be more informative to say that half the presidents from both parties oversaw increases in spending, and the other half oversaw reductions.
It is often true that if you ignore certain data that hurts your thesis, its possible to draw very different conclusions using the adjusted data set.
If you simply assign data that you dont like as an outlier, this exercise even sounds well thought out.
Except I'm not the one with a thesis. I made it plain the data don't support one.
I don't think that spending as a percentage of GDP is a good way to measure growth of spending, because presiding over fast economic growth is not the same thing as cutting spending. For example, under Clinton, real (inflation adjusted) GDP grew at an annual rate of 3.57% per year, whereas under GW Bush, it grew at 2.02% per year for the first seven years, and if you include his final year that drops to 1.50% due to the start of the Great Recession. Inflation adjusted Federal spending did grow much faster under GW Bush than under Clinton, but you can't tell that by looking at Drum's chart.
Also, both COVID-19 and the Great Recession resulted in a big bumps in Federal spending and drops in GDP. Drum excludes Trump from the chart for this reason, but keeps GW Bush and Obama, which seems kind of ad hoc.
Covid was really a black swan external event. The 2008 banking crises was very much a product of Bush's administration (or lack of administration of remaining regulations).
Of course, there's always something, e.g. S&L crises, Katrina, etc.
Couple of things stand out:
1) W. Bush: I'd guess the long decline in military spending as a percentage of GDP halted (and partly reversed) during his years, because Muslims. Also, the final years of his presidency saw massive spending to bail out financial institutions.
2) The country collectively saw a pretty steep drop in federal spending in the 80s-90s, didn't it (more than 4 points of GDP)? I guess that makes sense: fairly strong economic growth combined with mostly* shrinking defense spending (as a percentage of GDP) combined with no new major entitlements. Also, gradually dropping interest rates helped.
*Reagan did achieve sharp increases in Pentagon budgets for a few years when he came into office, but IIRC in his second term this dynamic moderated, after Gorbachev took power.
Republicans project all their own evil actions on others. If a Republican says you've raped a baby, then he or she has raped a baby. It's almost a grammatical transformation. Google Translate should offer a Republican to English translator to make it easier.