« From U.S. News: Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Social Security | Main | Should We “Means Test” Social Security? »
Presidents and Economics (Roosevelt – Bush)
By JLP | August 20, 2010
UPDATE: (August 26, 2010) I updated the PDF to include jobs data and also updated President Obama’s stats, which are still estimates.
I spent a lot of this week assembling an economic history of the United States. The information I found, I organized neatly for you into a handy PDF. All my numbers (except for the GDP and the S&P 500 Total Return) came from the Historical Tables of the Budget of the United States – Fiscal Year 2009.
Why did I do this?
1. I’m tired of the rhetoric. I’ll be honest with you: I’m a Republican. But, that does not mean that I don’t want to know the truth. If Republicans are responsible for our current mess, then I think the American People have a right to know.
2. I wanted to see this information for myself. I’m still not an expert at understanding the United States Budget but I’m better than I was before I dug into this and got my hands dirty.
3. I think this material is interesting and I think EVERYONE SHOULD SHOULD HAVE A GRASP OF ECONOMIC HISTORY.
That said, here is the link to my special two-page graphic:
– Roosevelt through Bush
What information did I find interesting after putting this together?
• BOTH parties liked to spend money.
• The Democrats controlled the House 53 years to the Republican’s 18 years.
• Of the nine presidencies in my graphic (Roosevelt and Truman are counted as one), only four of them managed to grow receipts at a faster pace than outlays. Those presidents: Roosevelvt/Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, and Clinton.
• President Bush was the only president to experience a negative average total return for the S&P 500 Index during a presidency.
Finally, I wanted to go further back with my history but for some reason the source I was using only had the year end federal debt going back to 1940.
Take a look at the graphic and tell me what you think. If you think it’s interesting or useful, please share this post.
Topics: Economics | 15 Comments »
August 21st, 2010 at 10:22 am
Thanks for putting this together. It is a useful reference that you should keep on your site for future reference. I liked your first bullet point:
• BOTH parties liked to spend money.
Probably one reason I refuse to affiliate with either party.
August 23rd, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Thus far, Obama’s averages (across the board) are looking better than GWs — let’s hope this continues.
August 23rd, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Another thing I noticed, Obama is forecast to have a reduction in outlays (spending) in 2010: something that hasn’t been done since 1965 (and 1955 before that).
August 23rd, 2010 at 9:00 pm
BG, I don’t see any way that that forecast is accurate.
August 23rd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
#4 JP) Yeah, no way that 2010 line is correct. The wiki article for the 2010 budget says spending will be around #3.55 trillion. The interest payments on our national debt will be $164 billion this year
August 23rd, 2010 at 9:24 pm
I got my numbers from that 2009 Budget, which I know is inaccurate looking forward.
The problem, which is very easy to see when you look at the numbers is that if we cut receipts then, we have to cut spending too. We can’t do both. The problem with that is that politicians don’t want to say no to anything. “Yes to tax cuts. Yes to spending increases.” It just doesn’t work that way.
August 24th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Soooo many people think Carter spent tons of money. He didn’t, and it was his biggest mistake. If he had increased deficit spending during the 70s recession we would have pulled out of that recession much sooner. It wasn’t until Reagan ramped deficit spending in ’82 that the recession finally ebbed. Obama is very similar to Reagan. Both men ramped deficit spending. Reagan spent on nukes during the cold war, Obama spent on bailouts and wars in Iraq/Afghanistan.
BOTH parties love to spend.
The answer is counter-cyclical public policy. When times are bad, spend. When times are good, save.
Sadly, dubya was pro-cyclical. Times were good and he was a spendin’ on tax cuts. What a boob.
August 26th, 2010 at 8:39 am
The numbers in this spreadsheet don’t look accurate to me. For example, we know the deficit for 2009 was $1.4T and 2010 will be roughly the same amount. The July 2010 deficit alone was $650B. And I don’t think these charts really prove very much. The problem in Washington has always been run away spending, whether we are talking Republicans or Democrats. Bush was horrible with spending, and Obama is like Bush on steroids. The current tax cut debate is a mere distraction from the problem. Over the last century overall government spending in the United States has increased substantially from about seven percent of GDP in 1902 to about 35 percent of GDP in 2010. That is the problem in a nutshell. How on earth did our ancestors survive in 1902 with government only spending seven percent of GDP?
August 26th, 2010 at 9:00 am
Biz,
Yes, I needed to update the 2009 numbers. I was going on the numbers from the 2009 Budget. I’ll make the corrections.
The charts have nothing to prove. Rather, I was simply trying to organize this information into something more useful so that people didn’t have to go digging it up for themselves.
August 26th, 2010 at 9:16 am
Agree with you here Biz. Both parties are horrible when it comes to spending. And spending is where attention should be focused more so than taxes. I would be ok with tax cuts and decreased spending. To me it seems that the Republican party has drifted more toward the taxs and way too far away from spending cuts. A true conservative (in my opinion) would do the following…
In a good economy…
Raise taxes and cut spending vigorously.
In a bad economy…
Cut taxes and spending vigorously.
Counter cyclical public policy is the best way to go. It’s a shame that we’ve had leaders in the past who take austerity measures during recession and/or issue tax cuts and increase spending during times of prosperity.
August 26th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
A bit late to comment now, but BizofLife calculated the impact of who was controlling the various arms of government on the S&P 500.
Why Gridlock is Good for Investors
September 7th, 2010 at 8:28 am
JJ wrote:
Sadly, dubya was pro-cyclical. Times were good and he was a spendin’ on tax cuts. What a boob.
I write:
um, “times were good” . . . we were coming off of a Tech bubble burst under the previous administration and we had just gotten bombed by terrorists. I certainly don’t remember those as good times.
Because of Bush’s policies .. we were pulled out of that dire situation and employment rose tremendously as did the stock-market (2003-2007) .. check out the facts.
September 7th, 2010 at 9:15 am
another VERY interesting pattern is this:
The deficit column grows more negative whenever the Democrats control Congress and more positive (surplus) whenever the Republicans control Congress.
Let’s face it, the President isn’t all that powerful, it’s the Congress that runs things.
Thanks! for pointing that out with this factual data JLP !!!
I love when the facts speak instead of pundits and people’s opinions.
December 21st, 2010 at 6:39 pm
This is really well done. I checked some of the numbers just to confirm it was accurate and not biased and they all were correct – Great job! Could make lots of arguments for both sides.
August 8th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Are these numbers from published budgets? One of the problems is how so much of the spending is concealed spending- off budget. Also, how many presidents (like Clinton) pretended that slowing the acceleration of the growth of deficit was some sort of noble reduction in deficit? Going broke faster but not as much faster as had been planned is somehow virtuous?
Keynesian economics IMO remains a very bad joke, although there may be some element of truth to the notion that even this approach would have worked much better had we played it fully by the rules. As this chart points out, politicians cannot stand to miss an excuse to spend even when it is time to instead save. I simply cannot understand how we could have been so unthinking in the past 60+ years to swallow all this red ink- smoke & mirrors theories notwithstanding. The average housewife understands the basics of accounting far better than Greenspan or any who can so glibly accept debt. The whole lot of them are delusional if not deceptive, and the public has acted like a bunch of lemmings. Guess we get what we deserve for our intellectual laziness and failure to exercise good judgment at the polls.