The Big Lie: Republicans Balance Federal Budgets

1. Pro is responsible for writing a clear resolution Pro is upset about something that has to to do with Republicans, but exactly what? Did any Republican ever say that they always balanced the budget? A lie is saying something false, that is known to false by the person who said it. So who said what, and how does Pro know the person lied when he said? Pro has the burden in the debate to write a clear resolution and to prove it true. As Pro thinks about what he wants the resolution to be, I'll assume that Pro is affirming “Republicans are no more serious about balancing the budget than Democrats. 2. Only Congress authorizes spending; Republicans balanced the budget under Clinton The President submits a budget, but Congress always has the final say. Not a dime can be spent without legislative approval. Usually budgets are worked out as a compromise. The balanced budget passed while President Clinton was in office was written by Republicans and vetoed four times by Clinton before speaker Gingrich talked him into signing it.“When Republicans proposed their own balanced-budget plan, the White House waged a shameless Mediscare campaign to torpedo the plan — a campaign that the Washington Post slammed as “pure demagoguery.” It was Bill Clinton who, during the big budget fight in 1995, had to submit not one, not two, but five budgets until he begrudgingly matched the GOP’s balanced-budget plan. In fact, during the height of the budget wars in the summer of 1995, the Clinton administration admitted that “balancing the budget is not one of our top priorities.” [1. http://tinyurl.com...] The economy of the 90's boomed because of efficiencies from the introduction of computer technology, by capital gains tax cuts that fostered the technology boom, and by the “peace dividend” that cut the military by 670,000 troops. Republicans and Democrats agreed that the Cold War ended, most of the military could be dismantled. Budget surpluses occurred in the 1920's under Republican presidents Harding and Coolidge, under Democrat Truman right after WWII, and under Clinton. In each case Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. [2. http://home.adelphi.edu...] There were also surplus years under Republican President Eisenhower, in years both when Republicans and Democrats controlled Congress. 3. Revenues doubled under Reagan Reagan never had Republican control of Congress, controlling only Senate for part of his administration. Pro says that Reagan cut the high tax brackets, but raised other taxes. A problem with the 70% tax rate was that almost everyone who might have paid instead used government provided loopholes to escape the rate. Loopholes were reduced when rates were cut. Pro implies that the tax cuts and failure of Reagan's supply side economics cause revenues to plummet. That's wrong. Revenues exceeded that 1980 level in eight of the next 10 years. Annual revenues over the next decade averaged $102 billion above their 1980 level (in constant 1996 dollars). [3. http://tinyurl.com...] During this seven-year recovery, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third-largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy. In 1984 alone real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989. [4. http://tinyurl.com...] Deficits under Reagan were due to Cold War military spending, a strategy approved by the Democrats in Congress. Republicans complain about many policies of President Roosevelt, but not the WWII deficits. Under Reagan defense spending was proportionately 50% higher than that of recent years. The Soviet Union collapsed under the economic pressure, ending the Cold War. The 2000 recession began before Clinton left office. Wikipedia gives a plain-vanilla account of the recession and it had everything to do easy credit policies, trade deficits, and the housing bubble. [5. http://en.wikipedia.org...] A recent study put the past cost of the wars as $2 trillion over 13 years, $153 billion per year on average. [6. http://tinyurl.com...] That was 7.6% of Federal outlays at the start of the wars, declining to 3.9% today. [7. http://federal-budget.findthebest.com...] That's not a major factor in federal spending. 4. Obama plans deficits of a trillion dollars a year forever Under the most Democrat-favorable accounting, Obama has more the doubled the Bush deficit rates: Even excluding the 2009 deficit, which Obama’s dwindling number of shock troops falsely attribute entirely to George W. Bush, that leaves Obama with a four-year average deficit of $1.153 trillion. Include the 2009 deficit, two-thirds of which occurred after he was inaugurated, and his average rises to $1.231 trillion. To provide additional context, the eight-year average Bush deficit that Obama labeled “unpatriotic” was just $297 billion. Even being charitable to Obama by removing the 2001 budget surplus from Bush’s tally and adding the entire 2009 deficit to it, he still averaged just $511 billion. [8. http://tinyurl.com...] Since President Obama has been in office, neither he nor Senate Democrats have ever proposed a budget plan that would lead to surpluses. The current budget submitted to Congress by the President was scored by the non-partisan Congressional as averaging deficits of just under a trillion dollars a year for the next ten years. [9. http://tinyurl.com...] Pro criticizes the latest Republican budget as taking 20 years to achieve a balanced budget. That's considerably better than the Democrat's plan of “never.” The Republican budget plan submitted last year balanced the budget in 10 years. [10. http://tinyurl.com...] Neither last year's plan nor this year's received any Democrat support, and certainly no counter-offer of a plan to balance the budget. The 2013 deficits were substantially reduced due to the Sequester that both increased taxes and cut spending. The Sequester was a compromise worked out between Republicans and Democrats. The compromise this year is beginning to undo the compromise. Republicans had agree to a much larger “grand bargain” that would have brought much greater deficit reductions, but President Obama reneged on the deal, believing that he could not get Senate Democrats to agree to the deficit reductions. [11. http://tinyurl.com...] Pro claims that Republicans tried to pass a Balanced-Budget amendment, which Democrats blocked. Okay, how does that show Democrats are more intent on achieving a balanced budget than Republicans? Pro makes dozens of assertions about what Republicans want and policies without a single source to verify any of them. I have accepted a few of his claims, as noted above. The rest I reject as false and unsubstantiated. Pro should produce a source for each of his assertions. Pro gives links to Federal budget data, but his links only go to the top level of a large site. If he wants to reference the data, he should provide the links that go to it. He completely ignores who controls Congress, economic circumstances, and the reasons for spending. He says that Obama's unprecedented spending is justified to fight recession, but Reagan inherited a larger financial mess and turned it around much faster. Yet he finds both Bush and Reagan recession spending unjustified. Pro has not made a coherent or convincing case. He has not proved a Republican lied about anything. He has all but conceded that Republicans are more earnest in seeking a balanced budget than Democrats, saying that Republicans want a Balanced Budget Amendment opposed by Democrats, and that Ryan's budget plan drives deficits to zero while Democrats have no such plan.