Republicans: The Party of Fiscal Irresponsibility
Back when Obama signed the stimulus bill into law at the start of his first term, Republicans and conservative commentators harped on its historically large impact on the national debt. Republicans had long considered themselves the party of fiscal responsibility, and used that stance to justify opposing government spending suggested by the Democrats. However, today, I hardly hear any of the same chatter from the right over Trump’s even larger deficit. I decided to investigate.
At this point, we have nearly a century of well-kept economic data for the USA, so we can easily look back on past presidents to analyze their economic impacts. I pulled data going back to 1933, when FDR took office. Data before that is hard to find, and before then we were on the gold standard anyway, which would make for an apples to oranges comparison.
The findings were shockingly clear. Let’s take a look, starting with the debt. Here are all the presidents since FDR, color coded by their party affiliation, and ranked by how much the national debt increased per year, adjusted to inflation. I also included the overall average for each party.
It’s clear from this table that the Republicans are less fiscally responsible than the Democrats, on average. Since 1933, the national debt has increased by 53% more per year under the average Republican than the average Democrat. Obama is the only Democrat in that period who’s increased the debt by more than the average Republican, while five of seven Republicans have increased it by more than the average Democrat. Note that I didn’t include COVID-19 spending, and even without that and adjusted to inflation, Trump is increasing the debt more than any other president.
This could all be moot, though, because it’s not agreed upon by economists that the national debt is necessarily a bad thing. However, one thing’s for sure: Republican’s have no right to call themselves more fiscally responsible.
Alright, so what about other economic factors? The main selling point about Trump’s presidency has been the stock market - the market responds better to Republicans’ policies, right?
Wrong, here’s the data for the Dow Jones during each presidents’ term:
Here, again, we see the Democrats as the more successful party, with almost 60% more stock market gains in the average year under a Democrat vs. Republican. Trump is in fact above average for a Republican in market growth per year, but is below the average Democrat, and well below the last two Democratic presidents. So that selling point doesn’t really hold water either.
Now, I’d be the first to tell you that the stock market is not the economy, and shouldn’t be used as a proxy for the state of the economy, since it mostly just impacts the rich. So let’s look at something that better defines the state of the economy: GDP. Here’s the data of inflation-adjusted GDP growth under each president:
Wow. As someone who believes in the left’s economic policies (explained in these posts), even I was surprised by how clear a picture this painted. The top four presidents for GDP growth in this time were all Democrats, and the top Republican was still well below the average Democrat. This doesn’t even include Trump overseeing the worst quarterly GDP drop in history, just announced.
Ok, GDP goes up more under Democrats, but isn’t it possible that all those gains are felt at the top, and the average American is no better off? This is a very real concern, so let’s look into it, with inflation-adjusted median income. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find data earlier than 1983 for this, but here’s what I did find:
Reagan is the top by this metric, but that’s because the data starts in the middle of his term, when salaries would be lower due to a recession, so the net result looks better than if it started at the start of his term. Again, the average Democrat has had a much larger impact on the median income, with the average Republican producing basically no improvement.
Alright, but what about unemployment?
This one’s not even close. Not only are Democrats better at reducing unemployment, the average Republican actually increases unemployment. Harry Truman, the worst Democrat by this metric, and the only one who oversaw an increase in unemployment, is still better than the average Republican. Only two of the seven Republicans in this time have reduced unemployment, and that’s only counting up to 2019. By the end of 2020, Trump will almost certainly have a net increase in unemployment, leaving Reagan as the only Republican in nearly a century to reduce unemployment.
The only metric left to look at that I can think of is inflation. Carter was president during the period of stagflation, so surely Democrats have caused higher average inflation, right? Wrong again:
This one is close enough that we can call it a tie, making it the most positive outcome for the Republicans.
Let’s look at a summary of which party does a better job of all the economic metrics we looked at:
At this point it’s pretty clear which party has had more economic success, but let’s just look at a couple more things before we conclude. Here are the recessions the US has had since the Great Depression, and who the president was when it happened, ranked by the amount the GDP fell.
Recessions are certainly not caused solely by the president in office, but when it gets to the point where the 5 worst, and 9 out of 11 total are all under the same party’s leadership, you have to stop and think if that party is doing something wrong. If you were to remove all dependence on who’s president and say a recession is equally likely to happen under either party, then this would be like flipping a coin 11 times and getting 9 heads. There’s less than a 3% chance that would happen. That’s not even considering there were 8 fewer years with Republicans in charge, meaning we’d expect there to be fewer recessions under them if it was random. It’s far more likely that this isn’t a coincidence. Republicans’ more laissez-faire philosophy leads to higher income inequality, and higher income inequality leads to economic problems, for example, the last time the USA’s income inequality was as high as it is today was the lead-up to the Great Depression.
Finally, here are the longest periods of economic growth without a recession:
The three periods of 8+ years of steady economic growth all happened primarily under Democrats, and then ended under a Republican. Again, there are plenty of other factors, but when we have 87 years of evidence that clearly shows stronger economies under Democrats, you’d need even stronger evidence in favor of Republicans if you’re going to try to argue their policies are better. And, frankly, I don’t see what other evidence is left to look at. If such evidence does exist, I would love to see it, because it’s important for people to form their beliefs based on facts and evidence, rather than the knee-jerk belief that the policies they’ve supported in the past must be right.
In the case of economic policy, the facts and evidence, as shown here, all point to one abundantly clear conclusion: Democrats are better at running the economy than Republicans. Even Donald Trump agrees.
Path Forward
In an era when people are struggling to justify Republican support for any reason other than the economy, this evidence leaves us with little-to-nothing to support about the Republican party. Vote them out in 2020, and continue to do so in the future, unless they shift to the left, which has been shown to be the better economic philosophy.
Also, let’s acknowledge how successful FDR’s economic policies were, as shown here. He did some horribly racist things, which keeps him from the title of “best US president ever” in my book, but based on economic policy alone, he is clearly our most prolific president. He took us from the Great Depression, to the clear world economic superpower before even entering WWII. He was so successful he won four elections, all in landslides: his four opponents combined only won 248 electoral votes, not enough to win a single election. He was also likely the most economically progressive president we ever had. Let’s also acknowledge which prominent US politician is most similar to FDR, economically:
Bernie Sanders
That’s right, the person labelled “crazy” and “extremist” is actually the one most similar to our most economically successful and popular president ever. Donald Trump wanted to make America great again. Well you know who made America great in the first place (again, speaking economically and not apologizing for the racism)? Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We owe so much of our success to his social democratic policies, but practically exile anyone who supports them today. Why? Because the wealthy have convinced us to, for their own benefit and no one else’s. Don’t be fooled by the propaganda. Look at our historical precedence, as well as the success today of social democracies like Canada, Finland, Norway, Germany, and New Zealand. Social democracy, Bernie Sanders’ economic stance, is not crazy or extremist (I mean come on, it’s literally called moderate-left in political science). It actually has as strong a track record, domestically & abroad, as any political ideology, and it deserves much more respect than it gets in the US.
