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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (35989)	7/17/2009 1:33:19 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Many of the points raised are also directly relevant to the "We've increased debt less under Democratic presidents" argument. You have to count the massive levels of debt under Obama in the Democratic category. And there is no consistent Republican or Democratic method of dealing with economic and fiscal issues. Megan says "On actual domestic policy, Bill Clinton was well to the right of Richard Nixon." I'd change that to "actual domestic economic policy", I'm not so sure about other policies. You have Republican presidents who raised taxes (Bush I) and Democrats who lowered them (Kennedy). Wage and price controls under FDR, but also under Nixon. Each president is his own unique creature more than he is a Democrat or Republican in terms of matters that effect the economy (and thus indirectly tax revenue, and thus the budget deficit). Beyond that if you want to make such partisan comparisons (which are really useless IMO for the reasons laid out in this post), you have to consider the role of congress (most of the debt was created under Democratic congresses), the durable effect of policies (most of the entitlements where created by Democratic congresses and signed in to law by Democratic presidents), the delay before policies can have an impact, and factors mostly or entirely outside the control of the president or even the government as a whole.