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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (278299)	7/22/2002 3:07:04 PM
From: Steve Dietrich	Respond to of 769667

We can argue about whether or not there's been an actual surplus: according to CBO and OMB the publicly held debt has been going down for the last couple years (even when you don't count SS money as part of the surplus). According to you and Rush Limbaugh it hasn't. But this is just a side track for you to obfuscate my actual point: During the expansion in the 80's, deficits exploded. During the expansion in the 90's they drastically contracted (maybe even disappeared). Here's a CBO chart illustrating this incontrovertible fact: cbo.gov This shows that the Clinton administration was far more fiscally responsible than the Reagan administration. And that's why Clinton gets some credit for our low interest rates, low inflation, and low deficits which Bush is now touting as the basis of our fundamentally strong economy. Bush senior didn't inherit nearly as good fundamentals from Reagan. As for your contention that Reagan doubled revenue, that's problematic for a couple reasons. First of all, the numbers you are referring to are $550 billion and $991 billion. As you can see that's less than double. Furthermore they don't control for inflation. In inflation adjusted dollars revenue only grew about 20%. By historical standards revenue growth was substandard during the Reagan years. Using your methods we see that when Carter took office revenues were $355 billion and his last year in office they were $600 billion. Carter nearly doubled federal revenue in just 4 years! Why don't you or Rush Limbaugh ever talk about that one? When we adjust for inflation (very high back then) Carter still out performs Reagan, but not by near as much. Again, these Reagan numbers are pretty stunning considering we were in an economic expansion, where general revenue historically grows faster than it did during the Reagan expansion. Steve