Budget Yammerfest

   The conservative yammerfest about budget deficits doesn't hold up after a quick glance at history and fact.
   Since the end of World War II, Republican-led administrations have posted more and larger deficits than the so-called tax-and-spend Democrats.
   For example, of the 67 federal budgets put in place since 1947, all but 12 posted deficits. Of those 12 that listed surplus funds, only three were set up by a Republican Administration -- under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The other nine fiscal year budgets that posted a surplus were arranged by Democratic presidents; specifically, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Bill Clinton. 
   Moreover, Republican presidents who inherited budgets with surplus funds soon squandered that surplus and ran up ever larger deficits. The most recent was Republican President George W. Bush, who took office in January 2001 and inherited a budget with a surplus of $128 billion. Eight years later, Bush had gone through that surplus and ran the deficit to $1.4 trillion, which was passed on to the first year of the Obama presidency.
   And the GOP fiscal scolds now blame President Barack Obama for budget deficits. But the reality is that from a budget deficit of $1.4 trillion the year he took office -- the 2009 fiscal year -- the Obama Administration reduced the deficit in each subsequent year, bringing it back below $1 trillion for the first time in five years.

   More examples: Republican President Richard M. Nixon took office in January 1969, inheriting a surplus of $3.2 billion in a budget prepared by Democrat Lyndon Johnson. Two years later, the deficit leaped above $23 billion.
   Republican Ronald Reagan started in January 1991, and in four years the deficit ballooned from $79 billion to $221 billion. His vice president and successor, George H.W. Bush, drove the deficit even higher, to $290 billion for fiscal year 1992 and saddled the next president, Democrat Bill Clinton, with a budget deficit of $255 billion.
   However, three years later, the Clinton Administration lined up a budget with a surplus of nearly $70 billion -- the first since fiscal year 1969, when the budget for that year was written by LBJ, another Democrat.
   After four more fiscal years of budget surpluses, Clinton handed on a budget with a surplus of $128 billion to Bush 2. And, as noted, that surplus quickly disappeared.
   Is the nation out of the woods yet? No. As Doug Elmendorf, chief of the Congressional Budget Office, told a conference committee led by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray, "In the near term, the weak recovery from the recent severe recession has led to slow job growth." And for the long term, he added, "the prolonged weakness in the economy has lowered its productive capacity for years to come."
   But Elmendorf also noted that long term challenges can be met partly by reducing future deficits, even though current problems are "exacerbated" by recent sharp reductions in deficits.

   Do deficits matter? Many economists say no, since the government borrows money by selling bonds, most of which are owned by Americans. So, as one expert put it, "We owe it to ourselves." And even those U.S. bonds owned by foreign entities are easily sold on the open market to others, rather than seeing them demand payment in full from the government.
   So while fiscal hawks and deficit scolds try to score political points by ranting about the evils of deficit spending, their own conservative Republican leaders lead the pack in running up the tally. All the while, deficit spending helps to revive the national economy. And Democrats rescue budgetary boondoggles.
   Or, as the White House crowed today, "We've cut the deficit in half since the President (Obama) took office."