I don't normally visit the Democratic Underground, but this showed up in my Twitter feed this morning and I thought it was interesting. It's grossly unfair in that it ignores what would, in this case, literally be off the chart spending/debt increases by Mr. Obama, but nonetheless offers an interesting visual display of Republican "fiscal conservatism." And yes, this doesn't take into account the composition of the Congress at any given time, but the biggest jumps -- during the Bush II years -- occurred with the GOP controlling both houses.
Click on the image for a larger view.
It seems that Democrats have forgotten that only Congress has the power of the purse as defined by the constitution which makes the period from 1995-2000, which saw the biggest decrease in the rate of the increase of the national debt, belong to pre- W. Bush republicans. The most important thing this chart shows, however, is that BOTH parties have increased the national debt. The Congress that decreases the national debt will be the true hero. Until then it's just the pot calling the kettle black.
I do not think that graph accurately depicts Clinton's years.
I'm not positive -- honestly I didn't research it. But Clinton did balance the budget.
Yeah, but he started trying to do that after his healthcare proposal fell through... I suspect he saw the writing on the wall and sought to appease growing Republican resistance. (just a theory)
The Clinton numbers are skewed because of the Dotcom bubble, which didn't pop until Bush's term. The same trend was happening during the end of Bush's term because of the Housing Bubble. The only difference was that he wasn't able to push the crash into someone else's term.
This pdf from the CBO gives numbers in a reasonably understandable format, which is an accomplishment for the government XD
(Looking at the 1st page) 1999 and 2000 were the only years that the 4th column ("On-Budget") has a positive figure, meaning that expenditures were lower than revenues. Skip over to the 7th column ("Total"), which shows the total deficit or surplus, and the only years with a positive figure are 1969 and 1997 through 2001 (though by 2001 it's already declining from 2000's high).
So yeah, while the numbers are probably skewed by the dotcom bubble, etc., it is true that Clinton balanced the budget (by raising taxes, which is no fun. It never seems to occur to them to lower spending) and didn't add to the debt for a couple years.
But eww, guys, stop giving me a reason to defend Clinton ;)
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