Tag: Bill Clinton

The GOP v. Democrats, Round 1 – The National Debt

George ShaffnerLeave a comment

By Hugh Griffin-Banerjee

We Americans are often told that Republican administrations are better at cutting the deficit than Democratic administrations. For some unknown reason, the Democrats are inclined to bring a zucchini to a knife fight, but on the rare occasion some minor party factotum attempts to disagree.

The Near-Canada Gazette is a foster home for skeptics; we’re disinclined to believe anything we’re told by politicians or pundits or pedicurists or anybody else. If a significant assertion is controversial, then we try to make sense of it. If it’s testable, then we use simple, commonly accepted metrics to test it. (See Notes below.)

This is the first article of three that compares the relative economic performance of the three Republican administrations before the Trump Reign of Error against the last three pre-Biden Democratic administrations. Each article uses a single criterion––in this case the annual federal deficit, in sum the national debt.

For the purpose of this comparison, we (Miranda and I) researched the growth of the national debt during each presidential administration beginning in 1978, when Jimmy Carter approved his first federal budget. The comparison ends on September 30, 2018, which was the last day of the last fiscal budget approved by Barack Obama.

The incoming and outgoing national debts by administration over the forty-year period were as follows (in rounded billions):

President Party Years Entry Debt Exit Debt Increase Percent
J Carter Dem 1977-81 772 $1,142 $370 48%
R Reagan GOP 1981-89 $1,142 $3,233 $2,091 183%
GHW Bush GOP 1989-93 $3,233 $4,693 $1,459 45%
B Clinton Dem 1993-01 $4,693 $6,228 $1,535 33%
GW Bush GOP 2001-09 $6,228 $13,562 $7,333 118%
B Obama Dem 2009-17 $13,562 $21,735 $7,813 58%

Reading across the top line, the chart shows that President Carter inherited a national debt of $772 billion. The debt had reached $1.142 trillion (that’s trillions, with a “t”) by the end his last fiscal year, which was an increase of $370 billion, or 48% more than the debt he inherited.

In aggregate, the data tell us that the national debt increased by $10.9 trillion during the last three Republican administrations and by $9.7 trillion during the last three Democratic administrations. In other words, Republican presidents increased the national debt by $1.2 trillion more than Democratic presidents, or a paltry $60 billion per fiscal year!

If that’s insufficiently clear: The average Republican administration increased the national debt by 115%, and the average Democratic administration increased the national debt by 46%.

Unless the moon is indeed made of cheese, the Republicans will yell foul and produce their own “unbiased” analysis. That’s not to say that Democrats use agnostic, statistically valid data and Republicans get theirs from a twelve-year-old “statistician” who flunked math and who happens to be the daughter of an NRA lobbyist. Sadly, the pols in both parties are skilled in the dark art of data manipulation. If, however, you have qualms about the outcome, then change the dates, find a better barometer, and run your own numbers. The Republicans will be grateful––if perchance you can produce a different result.

It can also be argued that White House occupancy is a poor basis for comparison because Congress passes the budget, and the president merely approves it. In fact, the executive branch creates the budget at the president’s direction, he and Congress negotiate it, the president signs the final bill, and then he manages federal expenditures for the entirety of the fiscal year.

Update: The national debt increased by $7.8 trillion during Donald Trump’s Reign of Error, or about as much as it increased during the Obama years. Two small points of clarification. First, President Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression; trillions in stimulus were required to save it. In contrast, The Donald inherited the longest bull run in history. Second, it took the Obama administration eight years to increase the debt by $7.8 trillion. In contrast, Trump et al managed to achieve the same result in a paltry four years. Well done!

Notes:

1) Higher national debts are bad, not good.

2) The forty-year period beginning with the Carter presidency in 1977 and ending with the Obama presidency was not chosen at random. Between 1977 and 2017, Republican presidents occupied the White House for twenty years and Democratic presidents occupied the White House for twenty years. In both cases, two presidents served two terms and one president served one. Apples to apples.

3) The sources for the budget deficits and other data are the US government and Statista. Nothing in this article came from Cambridge Analytica. (If you don’t recall the name, Google it.)

4) Neither party produced an annual budget surplus except for the last two fiscal years of the Clinton (D) administration. That’s 38 (now 42) years of deficits versus two years of surpluses.

5) This article was first written in 2018. I didn’t bother to redo the entire comparison for the obvious reason.

The GOP v. Democrats, Round 2 – The Stock Market

George ShaffnerLeave a comment

By Hugh Griffin-Banerjee and Miranda Park

This is the second article in a series of three which examines the relative economic performance of Republican and Democratic administrations in the 40 years from 1977 through 2017. If you haven’t already done so, start with the first article, which compares management of the federal debt—a contest the underdog Democrats won, and not by a small margin.

In this article, we determine which party has been the better steward of economic growth during the same four decades. There are a lot of ways to gauge economic growth, but most are arguable or complicated or both. (See our Notes below.) For the purpose of this comparison, we’ve chosen yet another simple, agnostic, and numeric yardstick: relative stock market performance during each party’s administrations.

The three major American market indices are the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard and Poor 500 Index, and the Russell 2000 Index. The markets tend to move together, thus any one would be a fair measure, but, to misquote Goldilocks, “The Dow is too small, and the Russell 2000 is too big, but the S&P 500 is just right.”

Forthwith, the incoming and outgoing S&P 500 indices by Republican and Democratic administration were as follows:

President Party In Office  S&P Open S&P Close Change
Jimmy  Carter Dem 1977-81  101.00  128.40 27.1%
Ronald Reagan GOP 1981-89  128.40  294.00 129.0%
George HW Bush GOP 1989-93  294.00  441.70 50.2%
Bill  Clinton Dem 1993-01  441.70  1,305.75 195.6%
George W Bush GOP 2001-09  1,305.75  805.22 -61.7%
Barrack  Obama Dem 2009-17  805.22  2,329.91 189.4%

On average, the S&P 500 index increased by 32.9% during the last three Republican administrations. In comparison, the average S&P 500 index increased by 137.4% during the last three Democratic administrations.

Using the S&P 500 as a benchmark, the last three Democratic administrations beat the last three Republican administrations––by a factor of more than four!

The next time someone tells you that the Republicans are better stewards of the economy than the Democrats, ask, “By what measure?” Better yet, simply respond, “Bollocks!” Then walk away.

Update, March, 2021: From February 1, 2017 to February 1, 2021, the S&P 500 Index increased from 2329.91 to 3,714.24, or 54.9%, which raised the Republican average to 43.1%. Not awful, but still paltry compared to average stock-market performance during the last four Democratic administrations.

Notes:

1) The comparison begins on February 1, 1977, twelve days after Jimmy Carter was inaugurated, and continues through February 1, 2017, twelve days after Barack Obama left office.

2) Common metrics we might have chosen but didn’t were per capita income and gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Since 1977, per capita income has increased every year except 1991, 2002, and 2009, but the majority of that growth favored the wealthy––which may make it the Republican party’s favorite benchmark, but it’s certainly not ours.  The other candidate was GDP growth, but this measure has a long policy tail. There’s no reasonable way to approximate the beginning of each administration’s influence, and the length of the tails will vary.

3) For simplicity’s sake, we ignored the length of each administration, which, excepting the update from the Trump administration, was equal in total for both parties. Once again, apples to apples.

The GOP v. Democrats, Round 3 – Jobs

George ShaffnerLeave a comment

By Hugh Griffin-Banerjee and Miranda Park

This is the third article in a series of three that examines the relative economic performance of Republican and Democratic administrations since 1977. If you haven’t already done so, read the first and second articles, which compare party US federal debt and stock-market performance during the same period. Spoiler alert: the underdog Democrats defeated the overdog Republicans in both instances, and neither outcome was a close call!

In this piece, we attempt to determine which party has been the better “job creator” over the last four decades. As in the last two episodes, there are a number of metrics that can be used to measure relative job creation, but the simplest, most widely understood, and least obscured by specious data is the unemployment rate.

The incoming and outgoing unemployment rates by administration were as follows:

President Party In Office Incoming Outgoing Change
Jimmy  Carter Dem 1977-81 8.5% 8.0% -0.5%
Ronald Reagan GOP 1981-89 8.0% 5.6% -2.4%
George HW Bush GOP 1989-93 5.6% 7.8% 2.2%
Bill  Clinton Dem 1993-01 7.8% 4.1% -3.7%
George W Bush GOP 2001-09 4.1% 8.6% 4.5%
Barrack  Obama Dem 2009-17 8.6% 4.9% -3.7%

On average, the unemployment rate increased from 5.9% to 7.3% during the last three Republican administrations (prior to the Trump Reign of Error). On average, the unemployment rate decreased from 8.3% to 5.7% during the last three Democratic administrations before Biden.

Another way to gauge the difference: The unemployment rate increased by an average of 24% during the average Republican administration; it decreased by an average of 32% during the average Democratic administration. That’s a difference of tens of millions of jobs over forty years.

Naturally, the American electorate is generally oblivious to the fact that unemployment drops during Democratic administrations. More than anything else, this is a testament to the Democrats’ infuriating ability to hide their successes while the Republicans take credit for things they didn’t do.  

Update as of March, 2021: The unemployment rate when Donald Trump left office was 6.2%, up 1.3% from the end of President Obama’s second term. We might give The Donald some slack if he hadn’t botched the management of the COVID-19 pandemic so badly that more Americans were sickened and died per capita than in any other nation in the industrialized world. 

Notes:

(1) The unemployment data are from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(2) The comparison assumes that each incoming president was responsible for the economy from the first day of February after his inauguration until the first first day of February after his successor’s inauguration, which is why incoming and exit figures are identical.

3) This article was first written in 2018. We didn’t redo it for the usual reason: the results got worse for the Republicans.