Flashback! Fun with deficits

It really is fun, I promise! OK, so in my last post I referred to something I wrote on my old blog about how, in modern times, Democratic presidential administrations have actually been more fiscally responsible than Republican ones. Found it! [Here's hoping the links still work...]

...There's this myth that the Republican administrations are better with money than the Democratic ones. Interesting, because the breakdown of budget revenues, debts and surpluses going back to 1962 would appear to show otherwise...you can download it from the Congressional Budget Office here.

If you're not into long columns of numbers, there's always the summary of historical trends in the "Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government (Fiscal Year 2007)." You can download the whole 329-page document, but here's my favorite part:"The traditional pattern of running large deficits deficits only in times of war or economic downturns was broken during much of the 1980s. In 1982, partly in response to a recession, large tax cuts were enacted. However, these were accompanied by substantial increases in defense spending. Although reductions were made to nondefense spending, they were not sufficient to offset the impact on the deficit. As a result, deficits averaging $206 billion were incurred between 1983 and 1992. These unprecedented peacetime deficits increased debt held by the public from $789 billion in 1981 to $3.0 trillion (48.1% of GDP) in 1992.

After peaking at $290 billion in 1992, deficits declined each year, dropping to a level of $22 billion in 1997. In 1998, the Nation recorded its first budget surplus ($69.3 billion) since 1969. As a percent of GDP, the budget bottom line went from a deficit of 4.7% in 1992 to a surplus of 0.8% in 1998, increasing to a 2.4% surplus in 2000. An economic slowdown began in 2001 and was exacerbated by the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001. The deterioration in the performance of the economy together with income tax relief provided to help offset the economic slowdown and additional spending in response to the terrorist attacks produced a drop in the surplus to $128.2 billion (1.3% of GDP) and a return to deficits ($157.8 billion, 1.5% of GDP) in 2002. These factors also contributed to the increase in the deficit in the following two years to $413 billion and 3.6% of GDP in 2004, falling to $318 billion and 2.6% of GDP in 2005. Debt held by the public, which peaked at 49.4% of GDP in 1993, fell to 33.0% in 2001 and increased to 37.4% in 2005." (www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hist.pdf)

Then there's a more partisan interpretation here, which is pretty succint. Interesting how it dovetails with the government's own analysis.