Well if so (something I’m not asserting), it’s a Republican spending problem:
Economist’s View: Per Capita Government Spending by President.
Cross-posted at Angry Bear.
Well if so (something I’m not asserting), it’s a Republican spending problem:
Economist’s View: Per Capita Government Spending by President.
Cross-posted at Angry Bear.
Comments
4 responses to “It’s a Spending Problem, Right?”
Under Obama spending growth is half what it was under George W. Bush?
That’s a surprise.
That would mean the Obama deficits are due not to spending but to falling revenues
due to the Bush tax cuts and the Bush Depression…?
@The Arthurian
I actually should have mentioned, this graph doesn’t give details on what “government spending” is. By the wording I’d assume fed, state, and local combined. Of course much of state consists of money spent by them but transferred from fed, so… But I really should pull the numbers myself to find out.
They’ve been quite successful in peddling this lie, yes. The problem is that it is acceptable for the democratic neoliberals to then “become responsible” and “balance the budget”, after Bush/Reagan/Clinton (who only raised the top tax rate back to 40% in stead of 70%) have just spent a few trillion on supporting private enterprise.
I would therefore suggest you focus on their motivations behind the giveaways, as talking of ‘spending’ at all immediately (via those retarded household comparisons) invites ‘we must be prudent’ responses. The only thing that matters is the admission by Reagan’s budget director that they were hoping to drive up the deficit high enough that it would become impossible not to cut spending on social programs — after all, they had been “proven” to be “unaffordable”. (Because which democratic neoliberal if any would want to go against warfare and government-outsourcing-caused spending increases?)
It is worthwhile pointing out that under Bush 2, per capita government spending surpassed France. Not just military spending though, subtract the military portion off our spending and we still spend more per capita than Germany and Canada.
If you look at per capita taxes, current tax income is about sufficient to fund a German size government.