If you missed Michael Kinsley’s column yesterday, and you’re looking for the kind of information that can come in handy at family barbecues with that annoying right-wing uncle, I think you’ll find it’s the kind of piece that can come in handy.
At the outset, let me acknowledge that comparing economic data across decades can be tricky. It’s almost useless to compare two individual years against each other because of so many variables that would make the data unreliable.
Kinsley, however, didn’t cherry pick isolated years to paint a skewed picture. Instead he asked a straightforward question: do Democratic presidents have more success handling the economy than Republican presidents? Playing it straight and relying on the 2005 Economic Report of the President, Kinsley found an answer that should come as a surprise to no one: “The party with the best record of serving Republican economic values is the Democrats. It isn’t even close.”
We all want prosperity, oppose unemployment, dislike inflation, don’t enjoy paying taxes, etc. These values are Republican only in the sense that Republicans are supposed to treasure them more and to be more reluctant to sacrifice them for other goals such as equality and clean air.
Statistics back to 1959 make this clear. A consistent pattern over 45 years cannot be explained by shorter-term factors, such as war or who controls Congress. Maybe presidents can’t affect the economy much, but the assumption that they can and do is so prominent in Republican rhetoric that they are stuck with it.
Going over the numbers, the results were completely lopsided:
* Federal spending: An easy one for anti-spending Republicans, right? Wrong. Federal spending has “gone up an average of about $50 billion a year under presidents of both parties [since 1959]. But that breaks down as $35 billion a year under Democratic presidents and $60 billion under Republicans. If you assume that it takes a year for a president’s policies to take effect, Democrats have raised spending by $40 billion a year and Republicans by $55 billion.” (Democrats still have a better record at smaller government if you only compare results since 1981, “the date when many Republicans believe that life as we know it began.”)
* Federal revenue: Republicans successfully cut taxes better than Dems, but with worse results. “Spending goes up faster under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. And the economy grows faster under Democrats than Republicans. What grows faster under Republicans is debt.”
* Federal deficits: Reagan insisted he’d eliminate the deficit. Instead it grew to record levels. Bush 43 guaranteed a balanced budget, but has produced deficits that surpass heretofore unimaginable levels. It belies a pattern: “Under Republican presidents since 1960, the federal deficit has averaged $131 billion a year. Under Democrats, that figure is $30 billion. In an average Republican year, the deficit has grown by $36 billion. In the average Democratic year it has shrunk by $25 billion. The national debt has gone up more than $200 billion a year under Republican presidents and less than $100 billion a year under Democrats.”
If this were a boxing match, it’d be stopped before anyone got hurt. Over the last 45 years, Dem presidents have been more successful than Republican presidents on the size of government, debt, gross domestic product, real per capita income (money in Americans’ pockets), inflation, unemployment, and stock market performance.
For anyone who argues that there’s no real difference between the parties, I respectfully disagree.