Which party is more fiscally conservative, Republicans or Democrats?

Great Debates
1

Seems to me, measured on rhetoric alone, the Republicans clearly are. They certainly claim this trait. But do Republicans deliver more “fiscal conservatism” than Democrats?

I would love to approach this in more of a GQ fashion, but I’m sure even agreeing on the criteria to assess “fiscally conservative” in an objective manner would be worthy of debate. And with the political context added, I know better than to try and start this thread over there.

To even approach this question on an objective level begs the questions:

What metric is appropriate for assessing fiscal conservatism?

I would tend to think the ability to minimize government spending as a ratio to GDP would be such a measure. Agree/disagree? If you disagree, what metric would you propose?

If you agree, that would lead to the question of which party should take responsibility for economic performance, the one in the White House or the one controlling Congress?

I would tend to lean toward the administration, but I would agree that the answer is far from straightforward. Of course, if Congress and the White House are controlled by the same party, this is a non-issue.

What timeframe is appropriate for analysis?

I would tend to want to limit the timeframe to last fifty years. Going back prior to WWII would seem to deliver results that have little relevence today. Likewise, focusing only on the current administration probably isn’t helpful either, as it could easily be argued to be an aberration.

In fact, I would like to avoid the possibility that this thread simple degrades into Bush-bashing. So unless you are prepared to argue that the last few years are the only ones relevent to address the question, I strongly urge you not to rely strictly on the performance of the current administration.

I also recognize that there is a corollary question interceding the last three, and that is when should a party in power (WH or Congress) become responsible for economic performance? Probably not the first year in office, but anything more than two years seems to stretch credulity.

All answers to the bolded questions are open to debate. And if you are able to sustain your positions regarding those question, feel free to apply some facts and state your conclusions.

2

Neither party is, they just want to spend billions we don’t have on different things.

3

The GOP talks a lot about giving back your money instead of spending it, but they actually give back your money and then spend it anyway.

The Democrats talk a lot about raising taxes to provide things people need, but they actually raise taxes and provide pretty much the same services people already had.

The Libertarians talk about giving back all of your money but they’ll shut up right quick when they realize how small that’ll make their salaries (should they ever get into office).

The Communists don’t believe you have any money, but they’re going to tax you anyway.

The Neo-Nazis believe the Jews have all your money, and they’re going to take it and spend it all on taking more money away from Jews.

I believe you should all send me money because I promise not to spend any of it.

This is all somewhat immaterial because fiscal policy isn’t really as important as monetary policy.

4

http://www.house.gov/paul/

5

Politicians spend like drunken sailors. IMHO, it is only when the president has markedly different goals than Congress that they stalemate and start spending less.

Gridlock is the only way this country will ever acheive fiscal conservatism.

6

Here’s a website that has collected a list of economic indicators and their outcomes under Republican and Democratic presidencies.

http://www.eriposte.com/economy/other/demovsrep.htm

It suggests that Democrats tend to perform better on all economic indicators.

So, if “fiscal conservativism” means “better US economic indicators” then Democrats deserve the mantle.

7

Hentor: Would you happen to have the same data showing growth in spending when congress is controlled by Republicans or Democrats?

8

Do you, Sam? I don’t, yet. Does your post acknowledge that economic indicators are better under Democratic presidents, so now you are arguing that Congress is responsible?

However, for the time being, I did find this page.

http://www.eriposte.com/economy/tax/tax_n_spend_truths.htm

It is a breakdown of federal taxation and spending by state, using the political orientation of the House and Senate members from that state. What it finds is:

Let me know when you find evidence, you know, citations, references or material that we can look at together, to suggest anything other than Democrats do better on economic indicators.

9

Friend Samuel! I come bearing PDFs. On page 12 (PDF page 19) of:

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/fed_spend.pdf

you will find a chart entitled: “Federal Spending Has Increased Almost Continuously Since 1960 Regardless of Congressional Leadership.” What it shows is … federal spending has increased since 1960 regardless of congressional leadership.

Have you found anything yet?

Can we dispense with the tax-and-spend tripe now?

Can we agree that Democrats are better for the economy?

10

So which is more fiscally responsible: tax and spend (Democrats) vs. spend and borrow from your kids and grandkids (Bush Republicans)?

Frankly, I’ll side with the Dems.

11

That is certainly the title, however, It seems to me that the 5 years of Republican rule were slightly flatter than the 28 or so years of Democratic rule. Also, it should be noted that during those 5 years, many budget items were no longer available for cutting. If you look at page 25 you will see a chart titled “Mandatory spending has increased 680% since 1920.”

Also, if you look at the charts farther down the paper, you’ll notice that the federal spending per person and per houshold has been pretty flat since about 1980.

Also, the chart titled “The Federal Government Spends Almost $300 of Every $1000 Earned by Americans.” Shows that this trend of spending more or our income increased under all of the Democrat congresses until Reagan took office. It then wavered, and finally fell under the Republican Congress with President Clinton.

So, I’d say the issue is far from closed.

Thank you for the link BTW, I’m saving that one. :slight_smile:

12

Uh, Hentor… All I did is ask if you had some data about Congress. Why the hostility? Knee jerking a little too much?

For what it’s worth, I abandoned the idea that Republicans were fiscal conservatives back in the Reagan era.

The fact is, both Republicans and Democrats want to increase government spending, for the simple reason that the PEOPLE demand more services and handouts, and throw out of office any politician who doesn’t bring home the swag.

My GUESS was that the best situation for fiscal conservatism would be a Democratic president with a Republican congress. Because Republicans love to play the fiscal conservative card, but they don’t do it against Republican presidents. So when you get Republican presidents with Republican congresses, you wind up with out of control spending. If you have a Democratic president with Democratic congresses, you get out of control spending.

But even under Ronald Reagan, who probably holds the mantle as being the most ideological conservative president of the last century, government grew every year.

Of course, from my perspective spending is ALWAYS out of control. Starting from the New Deal, government has been growing at an exponential rate.

13

What hostility? I have felt none. I have not attempted to express any. If you have perceived any, I feel bad about that.

Well, that is worth something. I would have expected a more partisan statement, and am impressed.

I agree. What gets me is that one party has been successful in their efforts to tar another with a label that has no real meaning.

Perhaps, although we don’t have evidence that that is the case. Apart from that, I don’t think that “spending” in and of itself is a good indicator of the economic fortunes of the country. What did the spending get you in terms of GDP, jobs, poverty, public health indicators, and the like. That would have more meaning for me.

Well, as a minor quibble, federal outlays really didn’t take off until 1940, and actually fell by about 70% between '44 and '48 (per the OMB data).

14

Hmmm…aren’t we using an overly-broad definition of “fiscal conservatism”? Here’s Wikipedia’s:

The way I understand the term, it simply means being in opposition to government debt, i.e. “don’t spend more than you take in”. So to answer the OP’s question, we need simply to look at the federal deficit for each president, and determine which party ran higher defecits on average.

I found this table; unfortunately it only goes back to 1972, but we can go back that far, at least.

So in Nixon’s last year ('74), the surplus/defecit was -2000 (in millions of dollars)
In 1977 (Ford) it was -22,000
In 1981 (Carter) it was -14,000
In 1989 (Reagan) it was -118,000
In 1993 (Bush Sr.) it was -185,000
In 2001 (Clinton) it was +80,000
In 2002 (Bush) it was -153,000
And at the time of this chart, projected 2003 was -455,000

It would be better to average the deficits over the course of each presidency, but I don’t have time right now. Still, it pretty much seems like a slum dunk; The Republican presidents all increased the defecit, and the Democratic presidents reduced it.

15

Sorry, that last post wasn’t very accurate - I think I was off by a year. I found a better source that has the averages, adjusted for inflation:
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/charts_C/c5.html

In billions:

Kennedy -28
Johnson -44
Nixon -41
Ford -180
Carter -129
Reagan -255
Bush -289
Clinton -51
Bush -17

And if you average in 2003, of course, G.W. Bush would show a much bigger deficit than the chart, which only goes to 2002, and reflects the carryover from the Clinton Admin (according to the author).

So it still looks like the Democratic presidents have a better track record.

I apologize if that’s the same info that Hentor the Barbarian already posted - I just don’t have the patience to wait for his pdf file to load.

16

Interesting to me that no one wants to pick up the mantle to defend Republicans as the party of fiscal conservatism. So perhaps there is no debate there.

blowero’s posted definition was of interest to me as well, because I was using the term in the broader “smaller federal government” meaning than in the “opposition to significant debt”. I assume that showed through in the OP when I suggested the appropriate metric be the ratio of government spending to GDP (with no reference to deficit or debt).

While Libertarian posted little, the link he did provide led me to one of Ron Paul’s weekly columns, GOP Abandon’s Conservatives. While offering no support for Democrats, he certainly dispels the myth of Republican fiscal constraint.

Paul would appear to agree with Sam, that the Republicans in Congress really need a Democratic president to actually deliver on any sort of fiscal conservatism.

While the theory appeals to common sense, the only problem I have with it is that I’m still not sure it is supported by the facts. It appears to me that Democratic presidents with Democratic controlled congresses still have better track records than Republican presidents with Democratic congresses.

But what really puzzles me is how the Republicans have continued to hold the reputation for “fiscal conservatism” (insert either definition here). If you compare and contrast the “tax and spend” Democrats with the “borrow and spend” Republicans, the “tax and spend” philosophy is much more in line with fiscal conservatism. So how can the Republican’s continue to claim the mantle of fiscal conservatism, yet still paint Democrats with the derogatory slur of “tax and spend”?

I’m impressed with their ability to modify the perceptions of the public contrary to the reality. Of course, economic policy is only one such example…

That smells like a false dichotomy. I would agree that monetary policy is important, but I struggle with any conclusion that fiscal policy is therefore immaterial.

17

Well, so has the GDP. However, government spending as a percentage of the GDP has been pretty flat with some ups and downs. In fact, near the end of the Clinton Administration, it reached a low of 18.4% which was a lower percentage than any time since 1966. [You can check out the historical tables PDF file for the U.S. Federal Budget to see this sort of thing.] It has jumped up to an estimated 19.9% in 2003 under Bush according to the FY2004 budget tables that I have a copy of (although this estimate may be low because of the Iraq war), which is still in fact below what it was during the entire period from 1975 to 1996.

Note that none of those Heritage Foundation charts seem to normalize out by GDP (at least that I saw). The best they do is normalize out by inflation. So, this general growth seen in the charts is only a concern if you want the government to be an ever shrinking fraction of our total economy.

18

Here is the page for the FY2005 budget from which you can download the historical tables. If you look at Table 1.2, you can see that the spending is still listed as being at 19.9% which confuses me a bit in regards to Iraq…but maybe that falls into FY2004. Note that the primary reason for the large deficits is not the rise in spending, although that accounts for some of it, but the drop in revenues from 20.9% of the GDP in 2000 to 16.5% in 2003 and estimated to be only 15.7% for 2004. The 20.9% was admittedly a high-point, previously matched only in 1944, and probably reflected the tax receipts off the big stock market rises and such…But the 16.5% in 2003 is the lowest since 1955!

So, in other words, what we have seen under Bush is a precipitous drop in revenues as a % of GDP from very high by historical standards to very low by historical standards and somewhat of a rise in spending as a percent of GDP from very low by historical standards to sort of moderate by historical standards (actually still low by the standards of the mid 70s through mid 90s).

I think understanding these historical trends is an important part of understanding what is going on currently.

19

That’s why I started from the New Deal, and not from 1966. My point was that before the New Deal, for the first 150 years of the U.S. managed to get by with a very small government (I don’t have the data handy, but I think government spending was only something like 3-4% of GDP before the New Deal). Since then, government has grown dramatically.

20

Okay, fine. So, your statement about exponential growth isn’t really relevant. What is supported by the facts is that there was a large increase in government spending as a percent of GDP from 3.4-4.3% in 1930-1931 (unfortunately the historical tables don’t go back any further) to ~43% in 1943-1944, after which it steadied out generally in the range of 16-22%.

And, what you would like to basically turn back the clock to before the New Deal or something more like that?