Changes in Federal Debt, Annually, By President

To follow up the previous post, here's a nice list that I've reduced from a wikipedia table with figures about the rates of increased federal debt. But ha! There is one exception! The federal debt went down one (ONE!) time since 1993. This time, I'll add the growth in GDP right next to the growth of the debt, and put an asterisk * after the years spending increase percentages outstrip growth of GDP.

1994 Clinton 4.6% GDP: 3.8%
1995 Clinton 3.4% GDP: 2.7%
1996 Clinton 3.0% GDP: 2.7%
1997 Clinton 1.7% GDP: 4.3%
1998 Clinton 1.0% GDP: 4.4%
1999 Clinton 0.8% GDP: 4.2%
2000 Clinton -2.1% GDP: 3.7%
2001 Clinton 0.2% GDP: 1.2% *
2002 Bush 5.5% GDP: 1.3% *
2003 Bush 6.2% GDP: 1.4% *
2004 Bush 5.7% GDP: 3.4%
2005 Bush 3.7% GDP: 2.6% *
2006 Bush 3.4% GDP: 2.9% *
2007 Bush 3.6% GDP: 2.8%
2008 Bush 5.0% GDP: 0% *
2009 Bush 5.5% GDP: 2.6% *
2010 Obama 12.5% GDP: -2.0% *

Can't say that the magic formula is Democratic President, Republican Congress anymore!

After isolating, it's interesting to go back and lay these two side by side, as the original table does. What can be observed?

1. Government consistently grows in cost.
2. The debt consistently grows.
3. Only in one of the Clinton years, his last, did the spending increases outstrip growth of GDP. In 6 of the 8 Bush years it did. Also, in Obama's first year. Were the smart years the Clinton years, or the Bush years? Looks like we can learn something from this.

I see a lot of criticism tying the lack of revenues to the Bush tax cuts. Ok, but is the lack of GDP growth no factor? After all, tax revenues are relative to the growth of GDP. If a person enjoys a tax cut to 20% and makes $100,000/year, he pays $20,000, while the person suffering a higher tax rate of 25% while making $50,000/year pays $12,500.

Maybe we should worry far less about tax rates, and worry a whole lot more about seeing to it that people can make more income. Taxing millionaires might yield satisfying rhetoric, but will cause your income to rise? Will it put 20 people into jobs? I mean jobs that expand GDP by creating wealth.

If we're really interested first and foremost about raising revenues, shouldn't we be trying to do everything we can to get fuller employment, and for people to earn more? We have 2.8 million millionaires. Meanwhile, we have 14.1 million unemployed. Nevermind the underemployed, like me. I'd rather see us get the unemployed into jobs, and the underemployed more work.

So, if the smart days were the Clinton years, we should observe that there is no GDP growth, so we should accordingly spend less. I mean, if that was smart then.

Changes in Federal Spending, Annually, By President

I've been watching the partisans battle it out over the debt ceiling, and marveling at the way numbers are thrown around without particular regard for things like accuracy. I've had so many different articles and posts come up that caused immediate cognitive dissonance. When I get that sensation, I go for references.

So, here's a nice list that I've reduced from a wikipedia table with figures about the rates of increased spending. Yes, only increases. Since 1994, federal spending has only increased. The last time it actually decreased was 1993, under George HW Bush.

1994 Clinton 1.7%
1995 Clinton 1.2%
1996 Clinton 0.7%
1997 Clinton 0.7%
1998 Clinton 2.2%
1999 Clinton 1.9%
2000 Clinton 2.5%
2001 Clinton 1.8%
2002 Bush 6.0%
2003 Bush 4.6%
2004 Bush 3.2%
2005 Bush 4.0%
2006 Bush 3.9%
2007 Bush 0.6%
2008 Bush 4.6%
2009 Bush 3.6%
2010 Obama 1.4%

Seems like the magic formula is Democratic President, Republican Congress- not that any of them reduced the size of government in this time. They all grew it. But nothing grew it like Republican President, Republican Congress.

So, the rhetoric about the size of government not growing is bullshit. Likewise, the rhetoric about spending not growing is bullshit. And the rhetoric about Republicans being the party of smaller government is the biggest steaming pile of the purest, pungent, unmitigated bullshit ever foisted upon a gullible public.

Jon Stewart Notices Bush's 3rd Term

I've been calling Barack Obama's Administration "Bush's 3rd Term" for about 15 of the 18 months of its existence now, due to the incredible continuity and expansion of Bush's policies by Obama. It's so obvious now that even Jon Stewart can no longer let it pass.

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Now, will Democratic supporters do what they criticized Bush for, namely, give their man a free pass?

It Hurts To Watch

I love today's media tools. YouTube is such a beautiful thing. We see all the minute details that led to catastrophe, preserved forever.

Shame on me. When President Bush talked about the 'ownership society', I only caught the soundbites, and not the full substance. I liked hearing Bush say that our country would be better if more Americans owned their own homes. Who could argue?

Well, the details. The pesky details. I feel shame. This YouTube clip shows President Bush talking about broadening government involvement in making it so. Remember when the bubble burst and so many tried to lay all blame at the feet of the free market? It kinda surprises me that they weren't more eager to lay blame at Bush's feet. But then, the commitment is to government expansion, even more than attacking George Bush. The commitment is to pretending and lying about the existence of a free market. Crazy suicide. Government causes problems, so were going to solve those problems with more government. Yeah!

Wince as Bush talks about spending tax money to take away the requirement for higher downpayments. Watch the collapse begin!



Then, a few years later, Bush talks about how people bought homes they couldn't afford! Well, damn! Who encouraged that with nearly half a trillion dollars of taxpayer dollars? The free market?

Get a load of the first minute, talking up the strength of the economy. Please- get me a bucket.

Left Doesn't Walk The Walk, Disappointingly

By the miracle of Facebook, I've been catching up with a lot of old friends, some of whom are folks left off with in Cleveland, from 2002 (when I left for Indiana) or earlier then that, as lives changed. Some of these same friends are somewhat alarmed by my libertarian politics, for a variety of reasons. This has caught me somewhat off guard, since I've been plainly advertising myself as a Libertarian since 1995, and was doing a libertarian radio show in that year, and then again 2001-2002.

My experience has long been that those on the left think of libertarians as far right wing, despite vast shared interest in things like civil liberties and at times, foreign policy. Meanwhile, those on the right think of libertarians as being far left, despite common ground on economic issues or the 2nd Amendment.

But most of my 'old' friends are left of center, as I once was. My best guess is that the reaction is thanks to Glenn Beck, who often calls himself a libertarian. He's moving in my direction, but I wouldn't call him one yet. I like that he admits that he knew nothing about our country and its founding, and then read up on it. That's rare. But he's a lightning rod, and the left hates on him. I mean, HATES.

And that's one of the things that gets my reaction. I react against people on the left for using hateful speech about Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al, because the left likes to play the role of being on the high road will identifying hate speech. Problem is, too frequently, the left doesn't walk the walk. Plenty of talk, but I only really care about substance. Sure, we're human, and we have passions, but decent people will retract or at least acknowledge the passion of the moment. I find too little of the actual high road in the left these days. I find too much justification of the hypocrisy, and I just don't take that well.

Do I hold the left up to a higher standard? Heck, yeah I do! That's because I was there once upon a time, and was betrayed. Wasn't ever betrayed by the right, since I was never there. It hurts more when you feel hurt or attacked from inside your own camp, as opposed to from the outside, where attacks are what you expect.

The first betrayal was Tipper Gore and the PMRC, with their attack on music lyrics. When I was a young man, the issues that mattered to me were few: 1st Amendment, no draft, an end to interventionist foreign policy. So, when the wife of Al Gore was on the attack on music I liked? I felt totally betrayed. I couldn't believe it. Messed up the black & white picture I had created where Democrats were the good guys, and Republicans were the evil, repressive bad guys.

Over time, my confidence in the Democrats in particular, but also the left as a whole, was eroded in many strokes. But each time, it was a hypocrisy that got my goat. Clinton promised a middle class tax cut, then didn't following through, the Brady Bill, the Americorps 'volunteers', and then taking us to Bosnia? I was done with the Democrats politically. The more I started to see, hear, read and learn, the more I discovered that I was not really well suited to the left, and especially the Democrats. I was a huge fan of Thomas Jefferson, and had simply accepted that his party was still classically liberal, which I was. Alas. Wow, did I learn.

I learned how the left couldn't help but being what it decried. Sure, dislike Rush Limbaugh, or now Glenn Beck, but the vile hatred I've heard over the years directed at Limbaugh- by the people who decry hate speech?

Now I've seen the left, which was all about the anti-war protests while Bush was in office, but not so much once Obama was inaugurated. The plain, political opportunism was revealed at the expense of principle. I've seen this over and over again, and so, I've simply come to the conclusion that the left is completely full of it.

But hey- prove me wrong. Show me that you are holding the feet of your own to the fire about the wars, about indefinite detention, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, the war on drugs, spying on US citizens, and a host of other things that were allegedly important to you before January of 2009, and I'll begin to think better of your side of the spectrum, and even more so if you will take those on your own side to task for saying things like, "I'd like to see that Limbaugh (or Beck, Hannity, etc,) dead". Squash your own hate speech and racism, and I'll take your protests on it seriously. But not until.

Keynesian Spending Is Practical?

A recent comment asserted that free market advocates are idealogues, while Keynesian advocates are realists. I think that's crap. Both are idealogues. That's okay with me. If you don't have ideals to draw from, what is your compass? One has to solve a problem by some means, and I think for most people, their idealism becomes their realism. Certainly, it does for me. But in our goofy world, one is deemed practical when they cross their ideology.

The real outcomes are what matters. So, what of the stimulus spending? First off, let's not forget that stimulus spending is both a Bush and Obama solution. From Chris Edwards, at the Cato Institute:

In his Brookings Institution speech yesterday, President Obama called for more Keynesian-style spending stimulus for the economy, including increased investment on government projects and expanded subsidy payments to the unemployed and state governments. The package might cost $150 billion or more.

The president said that we’ve had to “spend our way out of this recession.” We’ve certainly had massive spending, but it doesn’t seemed to have helped the economy, as the 10 percent unemployment rate attests to.

It’s not just that the Obama “stimulus” package from February has apparently failed. The total Keynesian stimulus is not measured by the spending in that bill only, but by the total size of federal government deficits.

I'm struck by the chart... which I cannot seem to add right now. It's worth clicking through to.

I would argue that Keynesian economics is dogma for Democrats, (and for the liberal Republicans like Bush) but doesn't appear very practical in terms of boosting the economy. We haven't even seen the inflation yet. Look out! Perhaps it has been very practical in boosting this President's poularity, even while it did nothing for Bush. It's all very curious. In any case, maybe it's time for Obama to become truly practical by today's odd standard of the word, and start adopting some market solutions.

Quick Reactions To Obama's Speech

The biggest thing I came away with from the President's Afghanistan policy was the middle of the road approach that is bound to give everyone something to dislike.

1. The Right is going to hate the timeline. Easy to criticize: All the enemy has to do is lay low until 2011. Then, back into action. Also, the Republicans find religion and suddenly this war is too expensive. That wasn't a problem when their team led, naturally.

2. The Left has so much to dislike, ranging from the simple fact of escalation, to the foreshadowing of deeper involvement in Pakistan. In fact, by the end of the speech, I began to conclude that Obama was really preparing the American people for an eventual war in Pakistan. Well, that's what a foreign policy of interventionism will do for you.

As for me, I still don't like the fact that the war was not Constitutionally declared by Congress, and that it represents a near continuous 60+ year stream of wars under the bi-partisan policy of interventionism. I'm war weary already. "All we are saying..."

The reasons and justifications sounded just like the reasons and justifications coming from the Bush White House over the previous seven years. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. This isn't the 'right war'. The right war would deal with the people behind the 9/11 attacks. The right strategy would involve a whole lot more intelligence, and no occupation of foreign lands. The Obama plan appears to be in line with Bush's pre-emptive war. Rooting out would-be terrorists who might attack us? This made Bush a liar and a dunce, as I recall.

No sir, I don't like it. The speech was lovely. The policy is crap.

Bush's Third Term

I hope the folks who sported the "No Third Term" bumper stickers in the Fall of last year as tasting the buyer's remorse. President Obama is changing so little besides the names we call certain policies. It's so apparent, that even the commentators on the Left can help but notice it.



Three cheers for Rachel Maddow! I deeply respect her integrity for this report. It would have been easy enough for her to report on Obama's anti-Bush remarks while sweeping the subtance that makes Obama's policies exactly the same as Bush's under the rug. Change, my eye!

So, what about the Right? From Gene Healy at Cato at Liberty:

Since Rich Lowry, Karl Rove, and Charles Krauthammer have all admitted that Obama’s anti-terror policies are substantially the same as Bush’s, I assume they’ll refrain from arguing that Obama’s making the country less safe, and they’ll hold the recriminations if and when there’s another terrorist attack. Right?

I wouldn't hold my breath.

The More Things Change...

So, Obama has ordered more troops into Afghanistan. I get the feeling the nation could have had that by voting for McCain. From Time Magazine's article, "Obama Afghanistan Plan Breaks Old Ground":

Did George Bush leave one of his old speeches in the Resolute Desk? As President Obama unveiled his Afghanistan-Pakistan policy Friday, it was hard to miss the echoes of his predecessor's "surge" strategy in Iraq. Indeed, says James Dobbins, the State Department veteran who served as President Bush's first envoy to Afghanistan, Obama's plan is "largely an extension of where the Bush Administration, in its last years, was heading, with some refinements and additions."

Will we be seeing lefties putting bumper stickers on their cars with an 'O' with a circle around it and line through it? Or perhaps an "01.19.2013 - Obama's last day in office" sticker? The wars were the Number One reason the left was against Bush until the economy tanked. Well, Obama is doing exactly what Bush did to prop the economy- stimulus packages and bailouts.

I imagine that dissent isn't as patriotic to some as it was a half-year ago. Imagine that? Partisan blindness. Who'd a thunk it?

I admire the protesters I saw in San Francisco last Saturday. They were not blind partisans. They believe in their anti-war positions enough to see the continuation of the same policy for what it is, and they called it out. What about our Blue Hoosiers? Will they just shove it on down and look the other way? Or, will they call Obama out on it?

More Change You Can Believe In

I might have thought that this one was made up by The Onion. Alas. The Washington Post reported this item, that should turn anyone who is half-conscious or has even a shred of intellectual honesty into a cynic:

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase "global war on terror," a signature rhetorical legacy of its predecessor.

In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense Department's office of security review noted that "this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "

And the stand-up comics lamented the passing of the Bush Administration. Bwaaaahahahahaha! The White House is always a barrel of laughs.

What Would A Libertarian Do?

President Obama really alienated me last night with his press conference/sales pitch for the 'stimulus' package, going out of his way to single out people who would prefer we did little or nothing in terms of government intervention. This had to be a jab at libertarians, because Republicans had made an Exhibit 'A' case for their brand of economic interventions and 'stimulus', especially in the first 6 years of the Bush Administration.

When is it better to do nothing? When the 'solution' is worse than the malady. In the words of Harvard's Jeffrey A. Miron, via CNN:

When libertarians question the merit of President Obama's stimulus package, a frequent rejoinder is, "Well, we have to do something." This is hardly a persuasive response. If the cure is worse than the disease, it is better to live with the disease.

In any case, libertarians do not argue for doing nothing; rather, they advocate eliminating or adjusting policies that are bad for the economy independent of the recession.

Biron's actions would include the following:

1. Repeal the Corporate Income Tax
2. Increase Carbon Taxes While Lowering Marginal Tax Rates
3. Moderate the Growth of Entitlements
4. Eliminate Wasteful Spending
5. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan
6. Limit Union Power
7. Renew the U.S. Commitment to Free Trade
8. Expand Legal Immigration
9. Stop Bailing out Businesses that Took on Too Much Risk

That's hardly a list of 'do nothing', in any case.

American leadership has gotten positively batty with overreactions and crisis. In this sense, Obama is a real continuum from Bush.

Is it bad out there? Sure, it's bad. Is the solution the same as taking all the money and going to Vegas and putting it all on 'red'? No, but it isn't far off, either.

Obama Takes Lesson From Bush

Change? Seriously, when will we be seeing some of this change Obama spoke of for about a year?

We can split hairs on this down the page, but the bottom line is this: Obama criticized outgoing President Bush for tax-cut-and-spend policies. Now Obama proposes massive tax-cut-and-spend policy. From CNN:

President-elect Barack Obama launched his campaign Monday for a massive package of tax cuts and spending proposals aimed at reviving an economy mired in recession.

...

Middle-class tax cut: Obama would offer a tax cut equal to $500 a year for individuals and $1,000 for couples. The credit would work essentially as a payroll tax credit, meaning the money could be delivered fairly quickly. Companies could simply reduce the tax they withhold from employees' paychecks.

The tax credit is likely to be offered only to those below a certain income level, but the Obama team hasn't specified where the cut-off point would be. The credit also would be refundable, meaning that even tax filers without any tax liability -- typically very low-income workers -- would receive one.

The credible criticism of Bush was that cutting taxes while drastically increasing spending will bring a deficit. This is something Obama was correct in identifying. Now that he is The Office of President Elect, it is suddenly something that works?

"We're working with Congress to develop a tax-cut package based on a simple principle - what will have the biggest and most immediate impact on creating private sector jobs and strengthening the middle class. We're guided by what works, not by any ideology or special interests," an Obama spokesperson told CNNMoney.com in an e-mail.

So, tax-cut-and-spend now works, with the difference being that the right constituent group are the recipients of the tax break. Some change. The math is exactly the George W. Bush same. Democrats were complaining that Laffer was wrong, and that marginal tax cuts do not yield higher returns. Is Laffer suddenly right? Is George Bush? Is there really a substantial difference in letting the middle class be favored to keep a slice of their earnings versus the highest wage earners?

I think tax cut and larger spending cut is the right recipe for this economic climate. Tax cut and spending freeze comes in second. Tax cut and spending spree comes in a very distant third.

Going to be a long 2009.

Short-Term Disaster

The Bush-McCain-Obama bailout isn't working in the here and now. The Dow is having its' worst week ever. That's a pity, because short-term success is the only success this train wreck could have achieved.  From CNN's early report:

Stock futures pointed to a dismal open Friday as markets around the world got hammered and General Electric reported quarterly results that were in line with Wall Street estimates.

and

US markets took a beating Thursday, with the Dow industrials plunging nearly 700 points to a five-year low, as panicked investors dumped stocks.

The unholy trinity of Bush, McCain, and Obama make Larry, Curly, and Moe look like Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Adam Smith. Heavy reliance on government solutions isn't breeding confidence in Americans. It seems the people have begun to get wise. Allowing the investment giants to fail would have actually generated greater confidence.

Better be out of the stock market and into gold. Libertarians have taken a lot of ridicule over the years for our economic outlooks, but everything that is happening now was predicted- by libertarian and free market economic analysts and policy wonks. Government isn't working. Maybe it's time to give up on what doesn't work, and to embrace the policy recommended by those who predicted this mess. 

Idiots

The House has now joined the Senate in passing the stupid bailout, and President Bush signed it. A few days ago, I cheered the House. Today, they are back to being regarded as assholes. Here's the House vote:

Democrats: 172 yeas, 63 nays
Republicans: 91 yeas, 108 nays

So good that the Democrats can see so clearly eye-to-eye with the President they regard as stupid. Looks like Andre Carson was one of the turncoats that changed his vote to stand with the President. Well, they're in league now. Can't wait for the days of 'change' coming ahead.

These are the days you vote Libertarian. These are the days we need 'None of the Above' on the ballot.

Consolidation of Executive Power

(Fishers, IN)- I was thinking about the Bush presidency, and the correct complaints coming from the Bush critics, that the Executive Branch was acquiring too much power. They were also complaining that Bush is just, well, stupid.

So, Should Barack Obama could win the presidency for the Democrats, can I have my 'audacity of hope' that perhaps the Democrats will scale back Executive power, or, is it more a case of 'our team knows best what to do with wrong-headed power- especially since this is a 'smarter' man?

Penn Gillette's recent CNN.com column, while very funny, addresses the concerns of widespread Executive power, and a 'smarter' President on the way.

The idea, especially from the Democrats that I know, is, we just get a smarter guy in the White House, and all the problems will go away. We'll have smart speeches, smart high gas prices, smart bad economy, smart war on terrorism, smart war on drugs, smart hurricanes, smart global warming, smart war in Georgia -- smart, smart, smart.

Barack Obama is way smarter than Bush -- so way, way smarter than me. Obama is way more charismatic than me. He did his big speech for about 80,000 people; I'll do my show tonight in Vegas for about 1,000 people. He's more ambitious than I; he's going to be the next president of the United States, and I couldn't even get to week three of "Dancing with the Stars."

Link to full article.

Budgets and Relative Belt Tightening

When the budget gets tight at the Kole house, the vacation budget is eliminated. It's a 100% budget cut, until such time as we can afford it. We eat out 75% less. Entertainment is little more than a trip to the library. New clothing purchases are halted. Etc. In sum, the cuts are pretty harsh.

Elected officials are therefore hilarious in comparison. They whine and moan about 3% or 4% budget cuts. Boo-friggin'-hoo!

Here's an interesting bit from Cato's David Boaz:

Time to stop spending, eh? That would be most people’s response to an unprecedented deficit. And they do mention “irresponsible spending” later in the piece. But somehow, it appears that the governors thought that was a good lead for an article in the Washington Post demanding more federal spending to subsidize state governments.

They lamented the the plight of the state budgets; New York, for instance, asked state agencies “to slash their state budgets by 3.35 percent.” Now, if I had to cut my budget for a new sofa, say, from $1,000 to $966.50, I don’t think I’d call that a “slash”; it’s more like margin of error.

Hilarious. And there are some who make it out that Grover Norquist has won the day, that fiscal conservatism has triumphed, with taxes almost nil, and the federal government shrunk to the size of that of the Polk Administration.

Reason has picked up on this willful ignorance, also, noting how some fans of larger government are tying the downward slide of the Republican Party to the idea that said slide is proof of the failure of fiscal conservatism. I took Balloon Juice to task on this just last week. From Reason's Matt Welch:

"...a strain of curious left-of-center analysis I'm seeing more and more this election: That the Republicans are losing because limited-government ideas don't work, and are no longer popular.

This critique requires a significant leap of logic − that George W. Bush, and his would-be GOP successor John McCain, practice and/or believe in limited government principles."

Fiscal conservatism wasn't even tried out by the Republicans. Tax cut, borrow and spend simply isn't a fiscally conservative ideal. McCain thinks cutting earmarks is a slash, just as NY's governor thinks a 3% nick is a draconian reversion to primitive barbarism.

At the Kole house, and I'm quite sure at many others across the land, when the money isn't there, we radically cut our spending, by as much as 40%. We don't take out loans so that we can keep spending. We don't commandeer from our neighbors under the premise of 'the common good'. We cut spending.

JibJab on Campaign

"It's time for some campaignin'!" (h/t Gregg Puls)



"When we promise you anything you want to hear". Couldn't be more on the mark.