When is the last time a Republican President or a Republican Congress actually lowered the debt?

[Gatsby]

When is the last time a Republican President or a Republican Congress actually lowered the debt?

Assuming we are talking about the debt-to-GDP ratio (the metric that actually matters), it looks like the last Republican to lower it was Nixon. Or maybe Ford, barely.


Nixon, possibly Ford, and Carter all lowered the debt-to-GDP a little bit. Reagan and Bush Sr increased it a lot. Clinton lowered it, Bush Jr increased it, Obama and Trump both increased it a lot, and Biden has lowered it a tiny bit.

 

[Zyphlin]

When is the last time a Republican President or a Republican Congress actually lowered the debt?

The Republicans had the Congress and the White House from 2017 to 2019 and from 2003 to 2007, why didn't they lower the debt in either of those periods?

2001

That's the last time ANYONE in our government actually lowered our debt.

Unfortunately people don't seem to understand the difference between the DEBT and the deficit. They also don't seem to understand that typical political language around the deficit being “reduced” typically actually means it INCREASED, just at a smaller level than the previous year or than what was expected.

Sadly we don't have a truly fiscally responsible party in this country. We have one that wants to spend like drunken sailors all the time, and one that wants to do it whenever they're in power. And we the voters are ultimately to blame because we've created the incentive structure by never wanting to address any of the actual key drivers of our debt.

 

[Taylor]

Nobody is going to lower the debt without making some serious changes to SS/Medicare.

 

[ralfy]

When is the last time a Republican President or a Republican Congress actually lowered the debt?

The Republicans had the Congress and the White House from 2017 to 2019 and from 2003 to 2007, why didn't they lower the debt in either of those periods?

In relation to that and total debt:

Krugman and the Pied Pipers of Debt

Investors are celebrating an incipient “recovery,” but the interventions that were responsible for it are sowing the seeds of a more violent contraction...

seekingalpha.com

That is, every admin promoted voodoo economics, which involves total debts going up. And that was inevitable because the dollar has been used as a global reserve currency, in turn leading to chronic trade deficits.

 

[CanadaJohn]

The federal deficit in Canada this year is lower than the last years of the Mulroney years in office


Harper took the surpluses of the Chretien years and after two years had nothing but deficit.

Alberta conservatives can't run a surplus without very high oil and gas prices

Druggie Ford in Ontario can't run a surplus if his life depends on it

Let's remember that Paul Martin, under Chretien, eliminated the federal deficits not by reducing spending but by slashing federal government transfers to the Provinces in areas of federal jurisdiction, such as health care - remember, health care was supposed to be a 50/50 deal between the federal government and the provinces and yet, starting with Paul Martin, the federal share of that responsibility has been eroded to the teens in percentage while provincial taxpayers - the same people - are saddled with huge health care costs. In Ontario, as an example, health care represents almost 50% of the province's budget each year. Let's also remember that Harper served during the time when the US almost destroyed the world's finances and economies with the mortgage ponzi scheme initiated during the Clinton presidenccy.

Alberta hasn't been able to generate their normal surpluses since the Liberals came to power in Ottawa and crippled the energy sector. Under the Liberals, Canada's enormous natural resources wealth is going to waste on the ideological altar of climate change, while the world's primary polluters, like China, laugh at them.

I have no idea what "Druggie" is supposed to signify in your mind but I will agree that Doug Ford has been a disappointment to many conservatives such as myself because of his Liberal like need to spend tax dollars on government initiatives.

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

Let's remember that Paul Martin, under Chretien, eliminated the federal deficits not by reducing spending but by slashing federal government transfers to the Provinces in areas of federal jurisdiction, such as health care - remember, health care was supposed to be a 50/50 deal between the federal government and the provinces and yet, starting with Paul Martin, the federal share of that responsibility has been eroded to the teens in percentage while provincial taxpayers - the same people - are saddled with huge health care costs. In Ontario, as an example, health care represents almost 50% of the province's budget each year. Let's also remember that Harper served during the time when the US almost destroyed the world's finances and economies with the mortgage ponzi scheme initiated during the Clinton presidenccy.

Alberta hasn't been able to generate their normal surpluses since the Liberals came to power in Ottawa and crippled the energy sector. Under the Liberals, Canada's enormous natural resources wealth is going to waste on the ideological altar of climate change, while the world's primary polluters, like China, laugh at them.

I have no idea what "Druggie" is supposed to signify in your mind but I will agree that Doug Ford has been a disappointment to many conservatives such as myself because of his Liberal like need to spend tax dollars on government initiatives.

Alberta conservatives are idiots.

The oil and gas production rates are higher than they have ever been, oil prices are relatively high and they still barely run a surplus. Anytime oil prices tank the budget goes into a deficit situation.

Alberta ran large deficits in the 80s and 90s and 2000s and 2010s with Liberals in power or Conservatives in power it is all dependent on the price of oil and gas

Oil is finite having the lowest taxes only because oil revenues helps now but not when the oil revenues dry up.

It should be saved for future use like Norway, invested so dividends and interest can be paid out.

I am Albertan born and raised. I have seen the idiocy of Klein, and his good side but the alter of the Alberta Advantage will dry up as soon as the oil does. Klein slashed spending, blew up hospitals because of deficits, then when oil and has royalties grew again, he increased spending drastically. The same pattern repeats every few year's, none of our politicians and residents learn from the past

 

[stealthycat]

I'm GOP/conservative/Trump voter and used to be highly concerned over national debt

and I blame GOP just a fraction lower than I blame DNC for it all. Make no mistake, Republican's have not stopped the gross spending, they're very much a part of the problem

 

[Napoleon]

Are they supposed fiscal conservatives? I thought Republicans say all Democrats do is tax and spend and raise the debt? Aren't the Republicans supposed to be "better" on this issue?

The problem with Democrats is that they leverage debt to sign the country up for massive expenditures without ever articulating let alone passing a plan to pay for any of it. It’s like giving a child a credit card with no limit. The problem with Republicans is that they are fixated on the idea of a balanced budget rather than generating surplus revenue. Its good that they don’t want more debt, but the Democrats have sent us too far down the rabbit hole to ignore the fact that they’ve already maxed out 50 credit cards that are accruing interest. At some point, we’re going to have to pay for their falderals.

 

[ALiberalModerate]

You could say the same thing about the Dems.

Yes, one could say that if they were ignorant. Whether one likes their policies or not, the Democrats were very effective in terms of getting bills and their agenda passed under Pelosi.

 

[MSgt]

Fun fact...

There are only two Presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries who reduced the national debt...and they were both Republicans.

View attachment 67497616

U.S. Debt by President: Dollar and Percentage

The national debt has increased under most U.S. presidents. Here is how much each president's time in office added to the U.S. debt by percentage and dollar amounts.

www.investopedia.com

Ha! That's what you got from this chart?! The point of the chart is to show debt creation and the percentage of change during Presidential tenure. You might want to look at the top. After the top two Democrats who resided over two World Wars, you have the modern day Republicans.

Reagan
George W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
Nixon
Trump <-----33% change is that $8T he added to the debt, with another $1.9T to go by 2025.

Within this sits Obama, who inherited yet another Republican economic disaster after 2007. And look how much lower Biden sits for now.

 

[MSgt]

The problem with Democrats is that they leverage debt to sign the country up for massive expenditures without ever articulating let alone passing a plan to pay for any of it. It’s like giving a child a credit card with no limit. The problem with Republicans is that they are fixated on the idea of a balanced budget rather than generating surplus revenue. Its good that they don’t want more debt, but the Democrats have sent us too far down the rabbit hole to ignore the fact that they’ve already maxed out 50 credit cards that are accruing interest. At some point, we’re going to have to pay for their falderals.

What are you talking about?! Virtually all the modern day debt has been created by obnoxious tax-cutting Republicans.

- Reagan created mass debt, Clinton inherited it and passed off three straight years of surplus.

- Bush turned around and started two wars while cutting taxes and kicked off the debt you see today.

- Obama inherited the largely Republican-made economic disaster and had to push cash into the population to get the economy going again. This added to the Bush debt. But he passed off a growing economy again.

- Trump inherited this, but obnoxiously cut taxes, mismanaged Covid, had to push cash into the population, and wrecked the economy. He, in just four years, added $8T to Bush's debt, with another $1.9T by 2025.

In the meantime, while obliterating government revenue so that the 1% can hoard the vast majority of every dollar in the country, Republicans pretend that it is because Democrats spend. Yet, the programs that they bitch about have been around since Roosevelt. Is SS new or something? The spenders have long actually been Republicans. Government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush's first term, alone! And it is a historical fact that the economy has always been stronger when Democrats hold the White House.

The plan should be to repair the perversion that Republicans made of the tax code so that YOU don't have to pay this debt down. You weren't the one who created it.

 

[Maidenrules29]

There's a reason people go into congress middle-class and end up multi-millionaires.

 

[Napoleon]

What are you talking about?! Virtually all the modern day debt has been created by obnoxious tax-cutting Republicans.

That is simply untrue. Taxes were cut by Republicans and revenue continued to increase. But that doesn’t help when the Democrats can’t stop spending.

 

[Mycroft]

Ha! That's what you got from this chart?! The point of the chart is to show debt creation and the percentage of change during Presidential tenure. You might want to look at the top. After the top two Democrats who resided over two World Wars, you have the modern day Republicans.

Reagan
George W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
Nixon
Trump <-----33% change is that $8T he added to the debt, with another $1.9T to go by 2025.

Within this sits Obama, who inherited yet another Republican economic disaster after 2007. And look how much lower Biden sits for now.

We aren't talking about "debt creation". We are talking about lowering the debt. (read the thread title). That chart pertains to the thread topic.

Anything else is a deflection and is rejected.

You are dismissed.

 

[ralfy]

To recap, debt keeps going up because of voodoo economics, which has been in place since the early 1980s, and it can't be removed because of the effects of the Triffin dilemma, which includes chronic trade deficits.

 

[MSgt]

We aren't talking about "debt creation". We are talking about lowering the debt. (read the thread title). That chart pertains to the thread topic.

Anything else is a deflection and is rejected.

You are dismissed.

And your contribution is to produce a chart that absolutely embarrasses Republican leadership, from Nixon on, so that you can go back a century to present Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge?! And by the way...

Warren Harding (1921-1923): The guy who immediately followed Wilson's World War I spending?
Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929): The guy who personifies the Republican knack for destroying the economy?

Was this supposed to be a joke and I just missed it? Oh, wait, it gets better:

So, Coolidge, a crusader for banks, destroyed the global economy with the Great Depression. Roosevelt signs Glass-Steagall to hamstring the banks from doing it again. Then we get to Reagan, a crusader for banks, who planted the seeds for his Republicans to push for the repeal of Glass-Steagall until Clinton's fool ass finally signs off on it as a concession in November 1999. After seven years of Bush, he wrecked the global economy with the Great Recession. So, your contribution to Presidents who lowered the debt are Harding and Coolidge, the two consecutive Republican Presidents who marched the world to the Great Depression.

In other words, going back even a century, you manage to find more evidence of how bad Republicans are for the economy. And you end your post by dismissing me? Oh, this was fantastic.

 

[MSgt]

That is simply untrue. Taxes were cut by Republicans and revenue continued to increase. But that doesn’t help when the Democrats can’t stop spending.

Revenue was put into imbalance. And the Republican answer to their obnoxious tax-cuts is to strip you of Social Security and Medicaid, which go back to Roosevelt. Not a problem until the modern age, though. The numbers are clear. I will provide a simple graph below. Spending and revenue were even enough and complimentary before Bush. Look how tight the red & blue lines are. Yet, Social Security and Medicaid had existed for decades. How can this be, if the "spending" is the problem? Clinton vetoed two Republican budget schemes that sought to inappropriately cut taxes, while attacking these social programs. Clinton rejected and appropriately cut taxes. Clinton handed off three straight years of surplus and healthy social programs. Republicans used those surplus years to argue that they have cause to just cut taxes under Bush. So, they did. I'll do this by the numbers and according to the red & blue lines of the chart below:

1) When the Bush tax-cuts hit the economy, so did the largely-made Republican Great Recession. As Bush and Obama pushed "spending" into the economy, revenue went in the opposite direction.
2) These are those Bush era tax-cuts and a lack of consumerism. But with that infusion of cash and proper taxing, under Obama, spending & revenue finally began to start coming back together into a balance around 2015.
3) But, Obama's earlier Recession tax-cuts hit around 2015, which retarded revenue in relation to ongoing spending. Imbalance assumed again and this was never addressed.
4) Instead, Republicans went wild. The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act hit the economy around the same time that Covid did. Trump, like Obama, pushed "spending" into the economy just as revenue flatlined.
5) Biden inherited this disaster, and again, for now, the imbalance has not been addressed.

Bush pushed government spending by 33%, but Clinton's more appropriate taxes carried the lines in relative harmony until Bush tax-cuts hit. And Trump will have added T$9.9 to the debt in 2025. But Trump's contribution was not at all about just spending. No real wars. No infrastructure. No programs for the border. Just inappropriate tax-cuts and the mismanagement of Covid. Extreme imbalance.

A lesson for us to learn here is that America is clearly, and frequently, ill-prepared for economic disasters, that Republicans seem to always make. And, yeah, this goes back to Republican Harding and Republican Coolidge's Great Depression, as Mycroft (shout out) was happy to prove in the adjacent post. But, after constantly seeking ways to cut taxes so that their wealthy donors can keep more of America's money, Republicans turn around and tell you that it's because the Democrats spend. That simple? This has always been a lie. We have a 1% because of Reaganomics. And we now have a 1% within the 1% because of Bush and Trump. And most of America's money sits in the bank accounts of that 1%. Trickle-Down continues to prove to be a scam, because as the government continues to have to spend on ongoing programs for society (largely from Middle Class taxes), the rich trickle virtually nothing. Spending is relatively steady compared to the basket-case issue of taxation. So, not only is our tax-code broken, so is Government revenue. And the two compliment each other.

 

[Yes_Minister]

The problem with Democrats is that they leverage debt to sign the country up for massive expenditures without ever articulating let alone passing a plan to pay for any of it. It’s like giving a child a credit card with no limit. The problem with Republicans is that they are fixated on the idea of a balanced budget rather than generating surplus revenue. Its good that they don’t want more debt, but the Democrats have sent us too far down the rabbit hole to ignore the fact that they’ve already maxed out 50 credit cards that are accruing interest. At some point, we’re going to have to pay for their falderals.

So why did the debt go up during the years of 2002 to 2006 and 2017 to 2019, when the GOP controlled Congress, the Senate and the White House? By your logic the debt should have gone down in those years.

 

[L88]

The largest federal debt/deficit jumps transpired during the terms of Abraham Lincoln (Civil War), George W. Bush (Iraq/Afghanistan), and Donald Trump (tax cuts for the wealthy).

Trump jump was hyper covid.
Revenue still increased.
There is no incentive for any politician to reduce spending.

 

[ralfy]

So why did the debt go up during the years of 2002 to 2006 and 2017 to 2019, when the GOP controlled Congress, the Senate and the White House? By your logic the debt should have gone down in those years.

More important, why did overall debt keep going up?

 

[bomberfox]

2001

That's the last time ANYONE in our government actually lowered our debt.

Unfortunately people don't seem to understand the difference between the DEBT and the deficit. They also don't seem to understand that typical political language around the deficit being “reduced” typically actually means it INCREASED, just at a smaller level than the previous year or than what was expected.

Sadly we don't have a truly fiscally responsible party in this country. We have one that wants to spend like drunken sailors all the time, and one that wants to do it whenever they're in power. And we the voters are ultimately to blame because we've created the incentive structure by never wanting to address any of the actual key drivers of our debt.

Fiscal responsibility is just a talking point. Reps use it only to sabotage programs they dont like so they can privatize it.

 

[bomberfox]

Trump jump was hyper covid.
Revenue still increased.
There is no incentive for any politician to reduce spending.

Duh lol. Its a game for them. They know if they can get you to freak out about the debt they can get you to sabotage programs that help people.

 

[PoliSciPulse]

As long as congress critters enjoy a re-election rate above 90% by not doing so, annual federal deficit spending will continue and likely get worse.

My general thoughts are aligned with Marianne Williamson (D-CA) of all people. The debt and deficit has ballooned and gotten so large that it doesn't really matter as long as the nations we owe get payments. It's a largely hypothetical number that only means something if you stop paying the people you owe.

 

[ttwtt78640]

My general thoughts are aligned with Marianne Williamson (D-CA) of all people. The debt and deficit has ballooned and gotten so large that it doesn't really matter as long as the nations we owe get payments. It's a largely hypothetical number that only means something if you stop paying the people you owe.

That’s the theory, but interest on our (growing) national debt continues to increase.

 

[PoliSciPulse]

That’s the theory, but interest on our (growing) national debt continues to increase.

As long as the minimum payment can still be met every month (or however often we pay it), there is no problem. The issue is when the minimum payment exceeds the amount that the Treasury takes in. Which I'm not sure has ever happened.