For the last several years, whenever Republicans have complained about the deficit or Democratic spending, Democrats have responded in two ways. First, they point to the spending record of George W. Bush and all of the spending approved by the Republican Congresses from 2003 through 2006 (and the Republican House in 2001 and 2002). They certainly have a point there. Congressional Republicans spent way too much money, though I do wonder whether the Democrats would have spent any less. While Democrats now point at President Bush’s drug plan for seniors as the kind of big spending program he favored, I don’t remember too many of Democrats at the time complaining about how expensive the plan was. If anything, many of them wanted a more generous plan that would have cost even more.
Their second response is to say that the last budget surplus we had was under Bill Clinton. What they forget to mention are the sources of that surplus. Let me mention a couple of the main ones. One, the Republican Congresses in the 1990s were less profligate than those under George W. Bush. It was a Democrat asking for money then, and they didn’t approve as much.
Two, and just as important, there was a big reduction in defense spending. Take a look at this chart which was in this week’s Economist:*
The Economist used the chart to show how much defense spending has gone up since 2001. But the chart is just as useful to show how much defense spending went down during President Clinton’s administration. The drop in actual spending was significant. The drop in spending as a percentage of GDP was even more dramatic – and the source of much of the famed Clinton surpluses.
So, the next time Democrats tell you that a Democratic president is better able to get our deficit under control, say yes, as long as they have a Republican Congress and as long as they get a peace dividend because their predecessor won a war.
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* “Threatening a sacred cow,” The Economist, February 12, 2011, p. 33.
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