Let’s begin with the Great Depression that was underway when Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered the White House. In 1930, Herbert Hoover’s budget was $3.4 billion and the Federal Treasury received in total taxes $4.2 billion, and there was a budget surplus of $.8 billion, which was a 23.5% budget surplus.
Two years later after Roosevelt had been elected for the first time, which is comparable to Bush’s current situation, Roosevelt’s 1934 budget was $6.7 billion, almost double Hoover’s 1930 budget, but the Federal Treasury only received $3.1 billion in total taxes. While the tax receipts for 1934 had dropped by 25%, Roosevelt had doubled the budget expenditures so instead of having a surplus of 25%, the Roosevelt administration had a deficit for the year 1934 of $4.1 billion or a DEFICIT of 132%. From 1934 to his death in 1944, not once did Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever balance an annual budget.
By 1944, of course, Roosevelt was dealing with World War II. In 1944 the tax receipts due to the war tax increases for the year were $43.6 billion, ten times what they were in 1934. However, the budget had risen to $95 billion, which is 14.3 times more than it was in 1934.
This has been the spending pattern by Democrats fairly consistently for the past 70 years. With very few exceptions, when the Democrats controlled Congress, expenditures went up much faster than treasury receipts. From 1947-1949 and from 1953-1955 Republicans controlled the House of Representatives and federal spending was reduced. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated in January 1952 and in 1956 not only did the Stock Market finally regain its values of October 1929, but once again there was a budget surplus. In 1956 with a Republican President and Republican House initiating the Budget, the nation spent $66.5 billion and the Treasury collected $68.2 billion, for a budget surplus of $1.7 billion or 2.6% of the budget. Twenty-six years before that, Hoover’s $.8 billion surplus was a whooping 23.5% of the budget!
For the year 2004, we have a Bush budget of $2.23 trillion and a proposed deficit of $304 billion. How does that, in real dollars, compare with the budget deficits of the Democrats in times of recession or war? President Bush, after all, has both. According to the Democrats there is a recession and the war on terror after 9-11. However, they still oppose Bush’s tough stance against Iraq that hopefully will disarm Saddam Hussein BEFORE he is able to destroy entire American cities.
If there were a $304 billion deficit in the $2.23 trillion budget the percentage the 2004 Budget deficit will be 13.6%. During the entire 12 years of Roosevelt’s administration he NEVER brought the budget that low! The closest he ever came to getting the deficit that low was a 17% deficit in 1938, when supposedly the Depression was “over” and war had not started in Europe. In 1943, at the height of World War II, Roosevelt spent three times the money that was raised in taxes. He spent $79.4 billion and the treasury received $22 billion. That would be the equivalent of George W. Bush increasing his budget from $2.3 trillion to $7.81 trillion dollars.
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