Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Interactive Graph on Debt/GDP and Party in Power


Thanks to Charles D. Musick for providing the data, and thanks to Tableau software for creating the interactive chart above, showing government debt and deficits as a share of GDP, by party in power. Note that in the post-1950 period, deficits as a share of GDP are almost exactly regardless of which party was in control, or whether it was split.

For a larger web version, go here.

23 Comments:

At 5/25/2010 2:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

GOP puts forward plan to reform Fannie and Freddie and to cut spending by $1.3 trillion over 10 years even before they repeal Obamacare:

Having shoveled out trillions of dollars in new spending and debt, House Democratic leaders now admit they cannot budget for all of it – and won’t even try. For the first time, the House will fail even to propose a budget. Instead the Democratic Majority will resort to an ad hoc, spend-as-you-go process that abandons any pretense of governing.

DEMOCRATS’ BUDGET FAILURE; REPUBLICAN SOLUTIONS

Meanwhile, Dems want another $165 billion taxpayer dollars to bailout their union cronies pension funds.

 
At 5/25/2010 2:21 PM, Blogger Junkyard_hawg1985 said...

As clarification on the data, the data in the chart shows total government debt (public debt plus intragovernmental holdings).

It is also worth pointing out that the post 1950 data set only had GOP control for a total of 7 years.

 
At 5/25/2010 2:54 PM, Anonymous Benny The Man said...

Year Debt Debt to GDP%

2000 9951.5 57.02
2001 10286.2 56.46
2002 10642.3 58.52
2003 11142.1 60.88
2004 11867.8 62.18
2005 12638.4 62.77
2006 13398.9 63.49
2007 14077.6 63.99
2008 14441.4 69.15

The makers of the Interactive Graph tried mightily to protect the modern-day GOP, a confederacy of feckless pygmies.

See above numbers.

Oh, a triullion here, and a trillion there, and soon you are talking some real money.

 
At 5/25/2010 4:29 PM, Blogger Paul said...

"The makers of the Interactive Graph tried mightily to protect the modern-day GOP, a confederacy of feckless pygmies."

Yes, good thing your boyfriend Barack, Pelosi, and Reid, are in charge and showing us how it's done.

 
At 5/25/2010 4:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pay-as-you-go, or paygo, rules require that new entitlement spending and new tax cuts must be paid for dollar-for-dollar with entitlement spending cuts or tax increases. As Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee has noted, the Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi "have violated pay-as-you-go rules by nearly $1 trillion" over the past three years.

And they're not done. In the coming weeks, say Congressional Republicans, we should expect some $300 billion of expenditures that Democrats will declare "emergency spending" and thus do not have to be offset by other spending cuts. The list includes $60 billion for a military supplemental spending bill; $23 billion for education; and $170 billion for jobless and other welfare benefits. All said, the deficit could climb to $1.7 trillion from the current record high $1.4 trillion. "I really can't think of the last time the Democrats paid for anything they want to spend money on," Mr. Ryan grumbles.

WSJ

 
At 5/25/2010 4:31 PM, Blogger Junkyard_hawg1985 said...

Benny,

In order for money to be spent, it must 1. pass the House, 2. pass the Senate, and 3. be signed by the President. The data you showed is not all Republican control. The Dems controlled the Senate in 2002. Dems also controlled the House in 2007-2008. The data is somewhat kind to Dems because it doesn't include 2010 data. Full democratic control will raise debt/GDP by another 10% this year.

 
At 5/25/2010 4:39 PM, Blogger Paul said...

Junkyard,

Federal spending is up nearly a trillion since the Democrats took the Congress in '06.

Coincidence? Nah.

 
At 5/25/2010 5:15 PM, Anonymous Benny The Man said...

The fact remains that no Republican't President has even proposed a balanced budget since 1959.

After waiting 50 years. I decided to let the candle go out.

The R-Party is deeply wedded to spending that flows to Red states and districts. Indeed, rural America would just about blow way with constant infusions of federal lard.

Take Rand Paul's Kentucky. Boy, is he in for a surprise. Federal spending exceeds taxes by $1.50 to $1 in Kentucky, amounting to a subsidy per person of more than $4,000. Source is the right-wing Tax Foundation.

Okay, so Paul gets to Washington, and wants to cut spending. And he learns we will be torpedoeing his own state. So, he quickly joins the bloc of other rural state Senators (remember, every state gets two, no matter how small their population).

So, Paul talks about cutting spending, but actually only votes for tax cuts. Starve the beats, "deficits don't matter (A Reagan-era mantra).

Well, without cutting spending, we end up with red ink.

That's why they are called "BS Republicans": Borrow & Spend.

 
At 5/25/2010 6:08 PM, Anonymous Ian Random said...

Looks like they consider the president to be significant, when for spending it is control of the house that matters. If memory serves, all spending bills must originate in the house, not the executive branch. The president does give them a budget that they adjust according to campaign donors. The president just can't veto everything otherwise they won't pass the stuff he cares about.

 
At 5/25/2010 6:54 PM, Anonymous Benny The Man said...

Ian-
Yeah, the blah-blah about Congress and spending is in the Constitution.
In real life, the President, as head of the Executive Branch, and with the full staff of the Office of Management and Budget behind him (staff that Congress does not have)submits a budget. Congress does not have the staff to oversee a budget.

The President's budget becomes the working document. I would be delighted if Congress became more active, espoecially in seeking cuts.

We have outsized spending in rural areas, and a military that Cato Institute (libertarians) says is too large by half.

Federal military employees get pensions in their early 40s, and lifetime medical coverage. Taxpayers get the bills. We pay people for decades to do nothing, and even take care of their medical bills. Amazing.

Mostly, Congress adds on spending in their districts.

It would be wonderful if an Repubclican't President submitted a federal surplus budget. It happened in 1959.

 
At 5/25/2010 7:23 PM, Blogger Junkyard_hawg1985 said...

"The fact remains that no Republican't President has even proposed a balanced budget since 1959." - Benny the fabricator of facts

George Bush proposed a balanced budget for 2002:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy02/pdf/budget.pdf

The budget proposal was issued in early 2001 well before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the recession, and the defection of Jim Jeffords which changed the balance of power in the Senate.

 
At 5/25/2010 7:48 PM, Blogger Paul said...

"The fact remains that no Republican't President has even proposed a balanced budget since 1959."

And as I've said countless times, I'll put the GOP Congress, even in their worst period, up against Pelosi and Reid. I'll put any Republican President up against your boyfriend Barack.

What say you, Benji boy?

 
At 5/25/2010 11:05 PM, Blogger bobble said...

paul:"I'll put the GOP Congress, even in their worst period, up against Pelosi and Reid."

really? i wonder how they would compare on pure pork spending . . .

check it out

you lose

 
At 5/25/2010 11:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Benny" is an ignorant left-wing hack. The following figures represent the Deficit as a percent of GDP. When the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives - where all spending bills must originate - the deficit was 1.14% of GDP. After only a few years of "Benny's" socialist friends running things, the place is a mess with deficits approaching 11% of GDP. The fact is that every single budget proposed by a Republican president to a Democrat congress has asked for far less spending than the Democrats ultimately approved. This, of course, leads the genius "Benny" to assert that the problem must be the Republicans. Time to get your head out of your ass, "Benny".

Year Deficit
% of GDP

2006 1.85

2007 1.14

2008 3.18

2009 9.91

2010 10.64

Source

 
At 5/25/2010 11:15 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, "booble", spare us the bullshit. Obama and the Democrats have funneled more taxpayer money, by orders of magnitude, into the coffers of the SEIU and the UAW in the last year and a half than all of those years of pork combined.

 
At 5/25/2010 11:25 PM, Blogger bobble said...

anon11:15"Obama and the Democrats have funneled more taxpayer money, by orders of magnitude, into the coffers of the SEIU and the UAW in the last year and a half than all of those years of pork combined."

do you any have proof of that? please cite source.

 
At 5/26/2010 6:26 AM, Anonymous geoih said...

History is a wonderful thing, and next time Coolidge or Eisenhower are running for office, I'll consider it, but the recent performance of both parties makes it clear that they are just different varieties of the same parasite.

As long as the debate is focused on picking the tyrant we hate least, rather than focusing on eliminating the tyranny, then I would expect that we will continue to be tyrannized.

 
At 5/26/2010 7:26 AM, Blogger Paul said...

bobble,

in your link, there's no breakdown in the chart by party. And as Obama said during the campaign (when McCain mentioned The Messiah's nearly billion dollars in pork he steered to his constituents during his short career as a part-time Senator) earmarks are a very small part of the budget.

Federal spending is up nearly a trillion dollars since the Democrats took over Congress in '06.

 
At 5/26/2010 7:31 AM, Blogger Paul said...

oh, and besides, the Democrats have just figured out how to hide their wasteful spending. They simply reclassify it.

 
At 5/26/2010 9:32 AM, Blogger juandos said...

Funny line of the day has to be from pseudo benny talking about real life...

Gee bobble! Didn't the Democrats take over the Congress in 2006?

None the less 'you might' just have a good point bobble when one looks at the 2006 CONGRESSIONAL PIG BOOK® SUMMARY but a more thorough study of the players involved would give one a better picture...

Having said that according to the Citizens Against Government Waste there was a whole lot of porking going on between 2002 and 2006...

None the less you might want to take a look at this from the CBO:
The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2009 to 2019

 
At 5/26/2010 10:10 AM, Blogger Andrew said...

I would debate, but the fact is there is very little good to say about any US political party or representative. We will die by our own hands if we don't undergo massive political reform in this century.

 
At 5/26/2010 10:16 AM, Blogger Paul said...

"I would debate, but the fact is there is very little good to say about any US political party or representative."

Too broad a brush. Look at Chris Christie in NJ. There's no Democrat equivalent.

Ann Coulter said it best: There are lots of bad Republicans. There are no good Democrats.

 
At 5/29/2010 6:23 PM, Anonymous Rodger Malcolm Mitchell said...

Debt/GDP is a meaningless ratio. Federal debt is the net amount of money the federal government ever has created in our 225+ year history. GDP is the total dollar value of goods and services creating in America, this year. The two are unrelated. See: Debt/GDP

Ronald Reagan's debt is part of Debt/GDP, but his GDP is not.

There is no relationship between Debt/GDP and inflation, recession, economic growth, depression or the federal government's ability to pay its obligations.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

 

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