GOP: The Party of Fiscal Responsibility
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 9 November 2005 | 6 responses
“President Bush and the current administration have borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 presidents combined,” reports CNSNews. From 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.
6 Responses to “GOP: The Party of Fiscal Responsibility”
is that 1.01 figure in real or nominal terms? I can understand that financing the new deal may only be a billion dollars in 1935 dollars, but would likely equal or surpass President Bush’s spending. While I am far from crediting Bush with fiscal responsibility, your numbers are entirely unrepresentative of the relevant information. If you happen to find real dollar expenditures, then report the relative spending of the Bush admin.
I presume that figure is not adjusted for inflation. Nor is it adjusted for GDP or total tax revenue, etc. But still…wow.
Inflation has not increased enough to exclude comparisons to the nearest presidents, especially when combined. But even taking inflation into account we see enormous increases in foreign borrowing. Keep in mind that this isn’t comparing spending – which itself is increasing faster than any recent president in history – but rather it’s comparing foreign borrowing, which itself can have a significant impact on inflation.
Last paragraph of a great book:
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Red-Ink Republicanism: Alive and well in the Bush administration. I think Nixon was the last Republican president to preside over a balanced budget.
So What? As Donald Trump once said “you owe the bank a hundred thousand, that’s your problem, you owe the bank a hundred million, that’s the banks problem” Its not like other nations can foreclose, and the fact that when they are choosing a place to invest their money they chose the US says a lot more about our perceived stability, than any state of the union speech could convey. Do get me wrong, I hate the wasteful spending, but I don’t see National Debt as the end of the world, especially when compared to GDP.