`From Isntapundit.com: Deficits, With And Without The Iraq War. “Do you see alarming deficits or trends from 2003 through 2007 in the above chart? No. In fact, the trend through 2007 is shrinking deficits. What you see is a significant upward tick in 2008, and then an explosion in 2009. Now, what might have happened between 2007 and 2008, and then 2009? Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, was what happened. Republicans wrote the budgets for the fiscal years through 2007. Congressional Democrats wrote the budgets for FY 2008 and on.”
This is a great graph, and I think the point of legislative control vs. the "current administration" is valid. However, this ignores the facts that A) The President's proposed budget is usually adopted with minimal changes. B) Factors other than Iraq (Does that include Afghanistan or not?) impact the deficit, that have nothing to do with spending (ie decreased tax receipts).
ReplyDeleteIt would be most telling to graph discretionary spending vs year, exclude the Iraq war if you want, but also exclude the stimulus package.
Actually republicans "wrote the budget" through fiscal year 2009. The OMB writes the budget. FY2010 was the first budget written by Obama's OMB.
ReplyDeleteOf course, things get changed between the budget and the appropriation bills. But the extent to which that can be attributed to party control of the appropriations committee/ general congress is debatable. I don't have any data on that but neither have you provided any. In other words, you might be right but you don't make a convincing argument to anyone interested in more than a cursory explanation to support their preconceived political ideals.