The Big Lie: Republicans Balance Federal Budgets

The last Republican president who ever balanced the budget was Dwight Eisenhower.Between 1998 and 2000, President Bill Clinton"s Treasury Department paid off more than $360 billion in debt. As a result of 115 straight months of economic expansion that began after an increase in the top income tax rate " which was virulently opposed by the right " the huge deficits left by 12 years of Republican rule had been transformed into a surplus.Back in 1980, people were spooked because inflation had soared to 13.5% and the economy was heading towards a recession. Gas sipping Toyotas from Japan were also kicking the U.S. Auto industry"s butts. Ronald Reagan and his band of Ayn Rand-reading, Laffer curve-loving conservative zealots were so damn sure that if we removed all supposed hurdles to growth " like regulations, unions, and taxes " wealthy folks would start investing, and jump-start the economy. In Supply-Side Bizarro World, once the One Percent"s done with gobbling up all the resources, the wealth would somehow work its way through their digestive system and eventually tinkle down trickle down on the poor. Now, even pro-business thought leaders like Forbes magazine admit that jobs aren"t created by wealthy investors, jobs are created by consumers buying lots of sh*t. Reagan and his Republicans went straight to work dismantling regulations and cutting taxes. As written in Wikipedia, "During Reagan"s presidency, federal income tax rates were lowered significantly with the signing of the bipartisan Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 which lowered the top marginal tax bracket from 70% to 50% and the lowest bracket from 14% to 11%." On top of that, there was the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 (DEFRA), which lowered the capital gains tax to a maximum rate of 28%, and "freezing the minimum wage at $3.35 an hour, slashing federal assistance to local governments by 60%, cutting the budget for public housing and Section 8 rent subsidies in half, and eliminating the antipoverty Community Development Block Grant program." Oh, yeah, and Reagan loved busting unions, too.Despite his tax cutting hero status, Reagan raised taxes 11 times. But mostly to finance our bloated military, not to help people. Believe it or not, Democratic President Bill Clinton left George W. Bush with a huge budget surplus. Dubya promptly transformed Clinton"s surplus into a deficit with his war and tax cuts for the rich, in accordance with the conservatives long-term "Starve the Beast" strategy " as popularized by Reagan. Basically, Republicans can get rid of earned benefits " like unemployment insurance, social security, and medicare " and other government-run programs that the American people pay for with their taxes by raising military spending, cutting taxes for the wealthy, and then telling voters that the government has no money and we need to pay off our deficit. If Democrats like Clinton and his supporters find a way to create a surplus, the Republicans will just spend it so the federal government"s hands will be tied again. Within months after taking office in the narrowest victory of nearly any U.S. president"by only one vote in the Supreme Court"George W. Bush had begun to turn that surplus back into deficits that grew and grew, despite funding two wars on emergency supplemental bills that were not figured into the budget. Vice-President Cheney laughed off the promises that the Bush tax breaks would pay for themselves and the budget would be balanced: "Reagan proved deficits don"t matter." But deficits do matter to Republicans"whenever there is a Democratic president. Since they woke up from a coma on the day President Obama was elected, Republicans have pushed two Big Lies: The President is responsible for the deficit, which is nearly entirely the result of Bush-era choices that the Republicans refused to abandon, and the deficit is responsible for the poor economy. In both instances, the opposite is true. Using the deficit as a battering ram, the GOP pushed for the rapid adoption of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which would ignore the true causes of the deficit"tax breaks, the wars and an unfunded Medicare expansion"and demand huge cuts to Medicaid, Pell Grants and every service the government provides. Paul Ryan proposed a budget plan with these draconian measures yet impartial experts warn that his budget doesn"t balance for decades. The largest expenditure in the Ryan budget is interest on the national debt.Eager to prove how conservative he is, Mitt Romney signed up for a balanced budget plan that works even faster than Ryan"s, by cutting even more government services. And he pledges to do it without asking rich Americans like himself to ever pay a nickel more in taxes. Like the majority of Republicans in Congress, Romney has signed a pledge to never say aye to any new taxes. Forget asking the rich to contribute what they can. Under Romney"s plan they"ll pay even less. Of course, to do this Romney would have to demand that the working poor and the middle class pay up to $2000 a year more to make the math work. And when does Mitt Romney"s budget balance? Don"t ask Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie (who also advised George W. Bush). Yesterday Gillespie told CNN"s Wolf Blitzer, " Uh"Wolf, I"m not sure of that myself, actually. I"ll get that to you though, and I"m sure it"s on our website." Don"t count on it. Why? Romney purposely released a budget that can"t be scored, and thus makes no serious projections. No one can say he isn"t a Republican now! Republicans have long abandoned any impulse to open a real discussion about the federal budget in hopes of distorting the debate. They"re attacking cuts that eliminate wasteful spending in Medicare, while proposing trillions in cuts that would do real damage. They"re blaming deficit spending for a bad economy that only deficit spending can help us to escape. They"re promising to balance the budget with Paul Ryan"s smile and the magic of trickle down economics. And how did that work out last time?Federal Fiscal Years run from October 1 to September 30, when a new president comes into office he has to work 8 1/2 months under the last Fiscal Year of the previous administration. For example, Bush43's last Fiscal Year was FY09 which was drawn up in the winter of 2008 and ran from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009. In figuring the National Debt for an administration you take the national debt figure from the end of the last FY for the previous administration (which would be the starting National Debt figure and subtract that from the national debt figure at the end of their last FY. 08/31/2012 16.0 trillion 09/30/2009 11.9 trillion Obama total 4.1 trillion 09/30/2009 11.9 trillion 09/30/2001 5.8 trillion Bush43 total 6.1 trillion* 09/30/2001 5.8 trillion 09/30/1993 4.4 trillion Clinton total 1.4 trillion 09/30/1993 4.4 trillion 09/29/1989 2.8 trillion Bush41 total 1.5 trillion** 09/29/1989 2.8 trillion 09/30/1981 .997 trillion Reagan total 1.9 trillion*** 09/30/1981 997 billion 09/30/1977 699 billion Carter total 299 billion Democrats total years 16 total deficit 5.8 trillion average deficit per year 362 Billion Republicans total years 20 total deficit 9.5 trillion average deficit per year 476 billion Obama put both wars back on budget when he entered office Bush ran both wars off-budget supplementals to hide the true cost of the war.* Bush43 doubled the national debt (from 5,807 billion to11,910 billion)* Bush41 doubled the national debt (from 2,857 billion to 4,411 billion)** Reagan tripled the national debt (from 997 billion to 2,857 billion)*** FY2012 -to 8/31/2012 (latest figures) from: http://www.treasurydirect.gov...... FY2011 figures from: http://www.treasurydirect.gov...... FY2000 to FY2010 figures from: http://www.treasurydirect.gov...... FY1977 to FY1999 figures from: http://www.treasurydirect.gov... president's economic policies are embedded in their federal budgets which are drawn up in