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Democrats, Republicans, and the Federal Debt Since 1979
By JLP | August 18, 2010
Check out this graphic I put together. I went through year-by-year and tracked the majority party of the Senate, House, and the sitting president. I then did a year-over-year change in the federal debt. Then in order to compare the data, I averaged the numbers based on the criteria found at the bottom of the graphic.
In putting this graphic together, I used the same information I used in yesterday’s post, which is found on pages 127-128 of Historical Tables of The Budget for Fiscal Year 2009. The debt figures are in billions of dollars.
Based on the last 31 years of data, the worst combination to have is a Democratic House and a Republican President. The best combination has been a Republican House and a Democrat President. NONE, however, have been good because ALL of them increased the federal debt every year. The only one that came close to not growing the debt was the year 2000 when we had a Republican House and Clinton as president.
Thoughts?
Related: Why Can’t We Get Our National Debt Under Control?
Topics: Economics | 9 Comments »
August 18th, 2010 at 6:12 am
Great piece! It really shows who controls the purse strings. After recessions (81-82 and 2001-2003) there is a general decline in the growth of the debt but the best color seems to be pink. Clinton wisely moved to the center when his party’s majority was decimated. I wonder what will happen in November when the same thing happens.
August 18th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I find it amazing that there is still a perception out there that the Democrats are the tax-and-spend politicians while the Republicans are fiscally conservative. But as you said in your post, “ALL of them increased the federal debt every year.”
August 18th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
MO,
Sorry, I accidently published the wrong graphic. If you’ll look at the new graphic, you can see that when Democrats controlled the House (no matter who was president), the Federal debt increased an average of 10.73% per year. Yes, the president has a lot to do with the budget but it’s the House that’s in charge of the budget.
One thing I plan to do is delve deeper into the budget to determine the causes of the debt.
August 18th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
It’s not at all clear that Congress controls spending nor that Democrats are less responsibel than Republicans. The debt increased an average of 10.71% per year under Republican presidents and 5.38% under Democrats.
Adjusting for inflation, the debt DECREASED in 1979, 1980, and 1981, 2000, and 2001. The only inflation-adjusted double-digit increases were in 1983, 1985 and 1986.
The inflation-adjusted averages are:
DD 2.59
RR 4.05
DR 8.32
RD 0.73
with 1.66% under Democratic presidents and 6.61% under Republicans.
The exceptionally bad years were under Reagan and the exceptionally good ones under Clinton. And Jimmy Carter had the most positive effect on the national debt.
Do we conclude that the best president of the era was Carter, and the worst was Reagan? Just asking
August 18th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
this is fascinating! thanks for sharing and all the comments are great! You were the right choice for my education.
August 19th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Can you update it for all of 1900 (before 1979)?
I would be curious of the impact of the Depression in the 30′s, WW1 and WW2, the establishment of the FED Reserve, and federal income taxes. Both inflation adjusted and non-inflation adjusted.
This is very good data that you’ve got so far!
August 21st, 2010 at 10:34 am
From my civics class, I seem to remember that it is the House of Representatives is the body that originates spending bills. If that is the case, then the party that controls the House should have the largest effect on the budget and debt. I know that veto power and Senate votes also have an effect, but it seems it would be a lesser one. I like Money Obedience’s comment about both political parties being spenders. As I understand it, the Tea Party folks have tried to separate their support from identifying with a particular party, but rather endorse candidates who will reduce spending, regardless of party. Dunno how well that is working out for them though.
August 27th, 2010 at 2:02 am
Anyone out there capable of and up for giving this a statistical treatment? How much change in debt is explained by each of the various factors (inflation adjusted and not).
On a side note, both inflation adjusted and nominal numbers lie in different ways. Nominal numbers don’t really reflect the actual difficulty of paying down the debt, but inflation itself can be a problem – so shrinking the real debt by growing the money supply doesn’t necessarily mean better governance, but it doesn’t necessarily mean worse…
September 13th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
If you’re trying to make a conclusion here about the party or parties in control that best manage the national debt, then I think you need to do a more rigorous and longer-term analysis.
I believe the data here are a bit biased because you’re basically only including Reagan and post-Reagan years — and it was during the Reagan years when the national debt really began to skyrocket in absolute terms. There were obviously fundamental changes in 1980 in politics and/or economics.
I would suggest taking the analysis back to 1948 to provide a larger data set and sample more circumstances (including one that could be relevant going forward as the debt in 1948 was quite large relative to GDP). From what I’ve seen in simpler analyses, the debt decreased relative to GDP from 1948 to the 1970s until it started holding steady.
My second thought here would be that you should correct for inflation in these data. I suggest that you measure the debt relative to GDP. That’s an important consideration to to keep in mind, as the data that you’ve collected is provided in terms of the value of the dollar for that year.
I also want to point out that nearly half of the debt is intergovernmental debt that is held by the Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare Trust Fund. Even though those trust funds theoretically exist, the funds have been intermingled with the general fund for… ever? Not sure that it makes much difference for the question at hand, but it makes the debt a little less scary when you realize that a good chunk of it is future Social Security and Medicare obligations.
Looking for something else but I just stumbled in… Maybe I’ll come back!