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You're the expert on indoctrination, Ken. Some people can be led to believe anything. The biggest staged event on Misfires is the hoary conservative declaration that "tax-and-spend" liberals are ruining the country/world, not to be trusted to handle even plastic dishes. Canada's and Britain's conservative governments aren't looking well; Canada in recession has a solid string of deficits.

Wherever you look liberal and left-of-centre governments are doing better than conservative ones. The economist Douglas Hibbs, after analyzing 12 Western countries, found "the unemployment rate has been driven downward by Democratic and Labour governments and upward by Republican and Conservative governments."

Look at the US: After Bush's lefty spending and lavish tax cuts sent public debt soaring even before 2008, the size of debt under Obama began to fall in 2013, and spending has risen by only 1.4 per cent (in part because of Obamacare) compared to 8.1 per cent increase under Bush and 8.7 in Reagan's first term. Right-wing governments aren't the fiscal stewards they're claimed to be.

In fact, Reagan increased debt, government spending and---taxes. Clinton drove down the debt until Bush repeated the old pattern. Canada had the same experience with the conservative Mulroney government which turned the country into a world-scale financial basket case. A liberal government fixed it with aggressive program cuts in the 90s, sitting pretty for The Great Recession.

Even socialist France is tackling economic issues that two decades of mainly conservative governments were unable or afraid to touch, this month added a 400-article bill to deregulate many sectors, allow competition, cut public spending, part of redesign of the entire economy. Bring in the lefties to cut public debt.

While in IL he has worked in economically challenged neighboorhood and his son in law is Mexican. He is our expert on race related matters.

Do you mean like Detroit, Greece, Venezuela and Cuba maybe?

Always exceptions, right and left, Jim. Cuba has done well under the circumstances, repressive government but exceedingly better health and education outcomes than Batista's, and right up there with ours in literacy. Venezuela was richer for rulers but arguably its people no better off than they are now. Greece? You've forgotten it took a very-left government to cut public spending, slash the size of the public service and reduce the rising-fast public debt load under conservatives a decade earlier. My point is, generally, liberal governments have been better financial managers than conservatives, the opposite of what some members have been indoctrinated to believe here.

Analyses of 30 years from 1981 to 2011 show that Canadian governments most likely to have balanced budgets, and those with lowest deficits, were of the provincial New Democratic Party, very left of centre, and which just won a majority in Tory-Blue-Forever province of Alberta. The federal NDP is the Official Opposition and currently running neck-and-neck with ruling Conservatives in the Oct. 19 election campaign.

Better financial manager's those lefties are they, eh. Could it be that lefties just have better balance, able to focus under incredible spinning forces.

Please note, when that, not another, Bush left office, he put nearly a trillion dollar hit on his balance sheet, in consultation with bo, so bo could hit the ground 'stimulus' spending. Still, if you have a moment, you may find that Dubya left office with some nine trillion in debt between him and ALL previous US presidents. Six and a half years later, how spinable is the current, well north of, eighteen trillion dollar debt.

Back in Reagan's day, the always excessively rich US, chose to crush the righteous red monster with the former might of cubic dollars not the lives of future liberals who were not aborted by their parents serving in the US military at the time. A great investment for a drop in the bucket, eh?

Hey, no fair, hasn't bo had a year or two of all time record income tax collections. Lavish, record, tax increases, not enough eh?

It's "intelligent" and "Too" not "To". I'll give the same consideration to your post as I would to anyone else functionally illiterate.

Ho Hum, the doctrinal statist, religious response.

King,
We were both there, so to speak, so I am going to remind you of a few facts you conveniently forgot, above. Reagan never got a single spending cut he asked for, and he asked for and presented many. The stated goal, after the fact, was that liberals in both houses were anxious to sabotage that administration in any way possible, and spending was all they had. The economy had come roaring back to life from what it was under Jimmy Carter with so much vigor, that they were terrified.

Had spending in the Clinton years been up to the most cheated on woman in America's husband during the Clinton years, we no doubt would still be digging out from that fiasco. But, Clinton had to come to terms with a bulldog by the name of Newt Gingrich, and the republicans in both houses.

Clinton had far less to do with any spending than Newt did, plain and simple. Clinton did sign NAFTA, an act that labor in this country called, at the time, a "knife to the heart of the working man", but, just as Clinton had told labor it would do, labor got down on it's knees, pulled down his fly, and re-elected Clinton, proving for the rest of time that, when it comes to labor in this country, it isn't about the working man, his wages or benefits, it is about liberalism.

The republican candidate, Bob Dole had said he wouldn't sign it. Labor, proving what labor is really all about, pulled the lever for Clinton, just like he told them to do.

The national debt under Obama, coupled with the collapse of the economy, has been devastating, and, unprecedented in this country. To attempt to illustrate it in any other fashion is dilusional.

Reminder over.


Best,
Ted

King,

Since you like Forbes so much, is the real data. Even this is skewed, as the majority of the deficit spending occurred first after the Democrats regained the House in 2006, holding the budget hostage for increased spending in order to get their support for Iraq war funding, and then as a result of TARP. Where on earth do you get your information?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesglassma...nts-truly-rank/

Here are the ratios of deficit to GDP for the past five presidents:

Ronald Reagan
1981-88 4.2 %
1982-89 4.2
Average 4.2

George H. W. Bush
1989-92 4.0
1990-93 4.3
Average 4.2

Bill Clinton
1993-2000 0.8
1994-2001 0.1
Average 0.5

George W. Bush
2001-08 2.0
2002-09 3.4
Average 2.7

Barack Obama
2009-12* 9.1
2010-12 8.7
Average 8.9
*fiscal 2012 ends Sept. 30, 2012, so this figure is estimated

Source: Economic Report of the President, February 2012

The results for President Bush are skewed by the 10.1 percent deficit/GDP ratio in fiscal 2009. A large chunk of spending in that year went to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. In fiscal 2009, TARP contributed $151 billion to the budget deficit, but in 2010 and 2011, $147 billion of that amount was recouped and thus reduced the size of the deficit during President Obama�s watch. (These calculations are complicated and are laid out by the Office of Management and Budget. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/spec.pdf, p. 49.)

As for spending itself, during the George W. Bush years (2001-08), federal outlays averaged 19.6 percent of GDP, a little less than during the Clinton years (1993-2000), at 19.8% and far below Reagan, whose outlays never dropped below 21 percent of GDP in any year and averaged 22.4%. Even factoring in the TARP year (2009), Bush�s average outlays as a proportion of the economy was 20.3 percent � far below Reagan and only a half-point below Clinton. As for Obama, even excluding 2009, his spending has averaged 24.1 percent of GDP � the highest level for any three years since World War II.

Americans can judge for themselves whether deficits are �enormous�� but only if they have the facts. In this case, there is no denying the order in which the last five presidents rank on the basis of deficits: Clinton, Bush 43, Bush 41 and Reagan in a virtual tie, and Obama.

Ted:
IMO excellent analysis

Ken61:
You're wasting your time posting facts when Brown is involved in a thread as he is "uncomfortable" with them. He'll either ignore them or change the subject.

Jim