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

To: RMF who wrote (41657)	3/5/2010 1:29:54 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

So what, are you telling me that Reagan was LESS able to control spending than Jimmy Carter was? Reagan was president for eight years, Carter for four. But then you might be adjusting for that already. The other point is that presidents don't control spending levels, congress has a big say as well. And as I've already pointed out the majority of it is almost on autopilot, with entitlements increasing with no presidential control of them, and normally no congressional control. Then circumstances effect spending. A deep recession (about as deep as the current one) at the beginning of Reagan's time in office resulted from wringing out the inflation of the previous years. And reversing the previous neglect and deterioration of our military (which helped Ford and Carter and their congresses lower their deficits) was important (and helped bring about the end of the cold war and the peace dividend, that Clinton and Gingrich used, along with other factors, to balance the budget later on) And yes deficits where large under Reagan, but not nearly so large as under Obama. And I'm not playing the game of just counting nominal dollars, so that the last president with large deficits automatically has "the biggest deficits ever", but using percentage of GDP. Obama's are close to the all time record for the US under FDR than they are to Reagan's (which had been the post WWII record).