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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (15959)	4/1/2010 8:34:49 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

OK, now we have something solid. I'd look to the debt increase in dollars more than the percentage. Having low debt before doesn't make a large addition worse, it makes it less of a problem. So looking at that data Obama will soon have added about half of what Bush added in much less than half the time. Of course you have to consider the circumstances. Obama's aren't good and if you just look at the numbers to come to a conclusion about him that could be considered unfair. OTOH the same also applies to Bush I (two recessions during his time in office, among other issues). Also (and this doesn't apply to Bush II) Obama's deficits are largely projections, not solid reality yet. Generally such consideration works to minimize the differences between presidents, the very high deficits usually have reasons beyond just the president, as do the rather low ones. Which is not to say that the different levels should just be ignored. For example even after rattling off all sorts of reasons why Clinton had an easier situation than Bush II in one of my recent posts I still concluded that Clinton did a better job on this issue. Bush II and Obama still come off poorly by this measure, compared to say Clinton. But its hardly the only measure. Another important one is to measure deficits as a percent of GDP. Since 1900 the three highest levels where all under Democratic presidents (In order the top 4 are FDR, Wilson, Obama, and Reagan, with a sizable drop each time you go from one to the next). But then you have to consider circumstances here as well. Such partisan comparisons are either overly simplistic (with just the numbers and no adjustments for circumstances), or too uncertain even subjective (with the adjustments for circumstances being anything but simple objective obvious adjustments). And each side can pick the comparisons that they like the best (Democrats can use yours, Republicans can present the data by congress in office, or can rank presidents by deficits as a percentage of GDP, either side can try including time adjustments for delays before their policies take effect and so on. Also the sample size is so small, with policy differences within each group being larger in many ways than the differences between the groups. So its hard to get very solid conclusions from such comparisons. But if your point is simply that "Republican" doesn't imply "good fiscal manager" or "low deficits" than I completely agree, I would just point out the same is true about Democrats, and also add that deficits are not the only measure of negative fiscal impact since big increases in spending, even if "paid for" still harm the fiscal situation of the country.