All the recent talk in the political media has been about ideological division and partisan rancor, yet the results when progressives and nationalists and Democrats and Republicans agree should also give one pause.
The president and Republican and Democratic congressional leaders have just agreed on a two-year budget that would hike federal spending $320 billion above the fairly strict spending caps of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which is obviously no longer controlling the budget. Curiously, over the two years, a Republican president just agreed to add $46.5 billion in defense spending and even more—$56.5 billion—in domestic spending.
To state the obvious, neither party cares about yawning federal budget deficits (which will approach $1 trillion) that have compounded into a whopping $22 trillion in national debt (and counting). With unfunded pension plans at the federal, state and local level, the unfunded liabilities for the entire nation are estimated to be a staggering $150 trillion.
David M. McIntosh, President of the Club for Growth, was quoted in the New York Times lamenting, “It’s pretty clear that both houses of Congress and both parties have become big spenders, and Congress is no longer concerned about the extent of the budget deficits or the debt they add.” With all due respect to McIntosh, the country didn’t accumulate a $22 trillion debt overnight. Both parties, including the Democratic Party, with a reputation for big spending, and the supposedly fiscally responsible Republican Party haven’t really been consistently fiscally responsible since the 1990s.
The only time Republicans tender the claim of responsibility is when they are opposing a Democratic president. Starting with Richard Nixon, when they get the presidency, Republicans irresponsibly cut taxes and increase spending, thus ballooning budget deficits and piling on debt at a rapid rate. Thus, in terms of a spending record when running Congress, the two parties are roughly equal—very bad—but as far as presidential records, Democrats are better at restraining spending and reducing deficits. For example, since Harry Truman, the champion of fiscal restraint was Bill Clinton. He and runner-up Dwight Eisenhower, the last fiscally responsible Republican president, were the only two presidents to reduce federal spending as a percentage of the nation’s total economic output.
The last brief bout of fiscal responsibility occurred for a few years after the 10-year Budget Control Act of 2011 was enacted during Barack Obama’s administration. After his initial pork barrel “economic stimulus” program intended to combat the Great Recession, Obama’s second term saw a reduction of budget deficits by an average of 11% per year as a result of military and domestic spending reductions of an average of 2% per year. (By way of comparison, President Trump is increasing such domestic and military spending by almost 4% per year and has so far added more than $2 trillion to the national debt.)
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