Democrats are more economically responsible than Republicans.

In my last post I showed that welfare is bad for the economy and free markets are good. I also presented the spending tax cycle that tends to make government bigger and bigger hurting the economy. I will now address some of the claim made by my opponent: Democrats are always more economically responsible, but they are generally more responsible than Republicans. "I never claimed that Democrats are always more economically responsible, but they are generally more responsible than Republicans" I never claimed you did. I showed in my previous post that republicans in general are more responsible because they tend to support lower spending and taxes. "I have referred to Roosevelt and Clinton, two very successful Democratic presidents." I pointed out that while Roosevelt did increase the size of government, he increased it to a size much smaller than today. In fact most democrats would be horrified to live in a country with the government as big as his administration. Also, he managed to get into the presidency when our country had hit the bottom. Generally, after depressions, there is going to be some recovery. There is a certain amount of luck involved in being president. There are a lot of factor's beyond the government's control. A president may be able to make spending or tax changes of several hundred billion dollars a year but with an economy of 15 trillion, the president won't be able to control very much. Clinton got in after the recession of 1991 which hurt his predecessor and got out right before the .com bubble burst in 2000. If he had been in during these two periods, his presidency would not have been that impressive. Reagan on the other hand, had to deal with an economy with high unemployment and extreme inflation and actually fixed it by cutting interest rates and cutting taxes. Clinton's spending cuts were very much due to the pressure from Congressional Republicans. "I have also referred to Hoover and Bush, two of the worst presidents in our history, who were Republicans." Hoover was just in for bad luck. Plus, he didn't really act like a Republican. He hiked the top tax bracket from 24% to 63%. He imposed the Smoot-Holley tarriff blocking free trade. He passed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act to boost the economy. This man was not a typical Republican of that time (1). When it comes to dealing with recessions, the Republicans have changed a lot since Hoover. In 2008, the Republicans passed the economic recovery bill under President Bush which is one reason our recession didn't turn into a depression. Now lets talk about Bush. Bush was struck by bad luck starting with the 2000 recession and ending with the 2008 crash. He also had a recession in 2003 which against can't be proved to have been his fault. As mentioned before, Clinton got a period between recessions. You cannot ignore the failures of George W. Bush and the recession he shall be remembered for. Barack Obama isn't perfect, but he has done his best repairing the economy and creating a better world for everyone. You have to prove that Bush's policies led to the recession. In fact there was a democratic majority in Congress and they didn't foresee the crash either. Economic growth under Obama is on par with that of Bush discounting the great recession (2). This is surprising since there is usually a lot of economic growth after such a large fall. There was sure a rebound in the stock market. Also keep in mind that Bush was only one president. He spend far too much on military, didn't curb spending, and while he did some tax cuts, they were not all that large. He was not the best example of a Republican. Obama and Carter Carter was a disaster. He became president promising economic growth and left the nation with high unemployment and inflation. I noticed that he was never mentioned. Obama's recovery has been the worst since the great depression in terms of unemployment reduction, GDP growth, and dow jones growth (1). During his first 36 months in office, GDP growth was 1.7% per year. Reagan's recovery was 9%. Bush's 2000 economic recovery was 2.9% (1). Income Growth Rates My opponent provides some income growth rate statistics showing that income growth under democrats was high. However, the time you are elected president has a lot to do with these numbers. Bush got hit with two recessions and one monster recession. Clinton got in between two recessions getting lucky. Instead of providing circumstantial evidence from growth rates lets argue about economic policies. Reagan would have had higher growth rates if he had not inherited a terrible economy from Carter that was stagnating. A better metric for seeing which party is economically responsible is to see the legislative battles today. Democrats fight for higher spending and higher taxes. For example, Obama just unveiled a new 3.9 trillion budget much larger than the 3.5 billion we have now. It includes hundreds of billions in new spending and taxes. So while democrats can sometimes propose spending cuts, they usually just increase spending over time. The Republicans in Congress have demanded dramatic spending cuts and lower taxes. One might ask why Republican presidents can't get the spending cuts they need. The answer often lies in the resistance from Democrats. 1: patriotupdate.com/articles/hoover-and-fdr-big-government-presidents-who-prolonged-the-depression/ 2: http://www.appraisaleconomics.com... 3: http://www.forbes.com... 4: http://www.politico.com...