…if only because it makes the truth visible so even Republicans can understand it. And speaking of Republicans, they have been crying about debt recently, and how the President’s stimulus package and automotive company bailouts have exploded the deficit, all the while seemingly forgetting about the multiple trillions of dollars in tax cuts President Reagan and the second President Bush signed into law, and the massive amounts of defense spending by both, including trillions for the Iraq War, all of which exploded the deficit and sent our national debt spiraling into the sky. Yeah, no cries from Republicans about those Republican debt producing actions.
Let’s take a look at this graph I found by way of Andrew Sullivan:
Looking at this graph, I take away from it that, as far as debt goes, things have been much much worse. Indeed, we piled on the debt as a result of World War II and government spending to get us out of World War II. And then, over the ensuing decades, the debt was consistently paid down, even as the New Deal social safety net programs thrived and as President Johnson gave us Medicare. When did our debt level start to rise again? The election of Ronald Reagan, who introduced the now Republican dogma that no tax can ever be raised, and indeed all must be cut, and cut, and cut, all the while we spend elaborate sums of money on the military. It used to be conservative dogma that fiscal conservatism demanded balanced budgets, rather than tax cuts.
With Reagan, Republicans divorced themselves from fiscal conservatism, and they took a second wife, fiscal irresponsibility. There was no national emergency during the Reagan years that explains the rise in our debt. No World War II. No Great Depression. At least George W. Bush could use the presence of an emergency as an excuse, given the occurrence of September 11th at the beginning of his term and the beginning of a possible Second Great Depression at the end of his term. (Although, the excuse would be a bad one since we spent trillions on a War on Iraq which in the end was a war of choice, not of necessity, and because Bush followed Reagan’s example in enacting even more expensive tax cuts than Reagan had). President Obama does have an excuse, as he had to spend to prevent that Second Great Depression, a true national emergency akin to the rise in debt during the 30’s and 40’s.
Rises in debt is expected and required during times of emergency. They are not expected or required during times of prosperity.
So for all the teabaggers out there…. we have been in worse debt before, and we paid it down. We are in debt now because it is expensive cleaning up the mess you and your Republican friends made. When you scream at someone about deficit spending, you better be screaming at a mirror.