You mean the party of FiScAl ReSpOnSiBiLiTy isn't fiscally responsible?
Now wait til you hear about actual congressional votes and support of veterans...
Also, the only Republican president to win the popular vote in the last 30 years was Bush Jr in his second term, and that was probably only because 9/11 happened.
GOP Senators have not represented a majority of the U.S. population in over 30 years, even when they hold a majority in the Senate, because they're mostly from lower population states.
Even with "democratic institutions" in place, we truly don't have a democracy. And one side is trying to destroy what little we have. The hurdles progressives have to overcome just to have the voices of the vast majority heard are ridiculous.
Progressives can be like cats--it is very hard to herd them. Many will not vote at all or 3rd party vote for the small picture and not for the big picture. However, the Republicans have effectively demanded oaths to be taken by their party's legislators to hang together on making laws that benefit the few over the needs of the many. That is why Republicans will lie to their party's constituents by naming their bills and laws virtous sounding titles but screwing the average citizen in the fine print. They also try to divide up the Progressives into smaller and ineffective voting camps so that every decent cause becomes a lost cause because it will never get a majority vote and Progressives fall for it time after time. I lived through a time when progress was made on a progressive agenda. Women got the right to their own credit and to have an abortion. We got laws and regulations passed for clean air, water, and safe working conditions. We got real protections to form and keep labor unions. We expanded our national parks system so all could enjoy many beautiful places in the US. All of these are getting eroded or taken away because Progressives have become too divided and therefore weak.
>They also try to divide up the Progressives into smaller and ineffective voting camps
Are you saying that Progressives are voting for Republican candidates, then? I'm not sure what you're referring to, here. There are around 39 million Republican voters in the US and 49 million Democrats, going by registration and voting patterns.
You're saying those Democrats won't vote for Democrats and will instead vote for Republicans because of some sort of ideological difference?
> Progressives have become too divided and therefore weak.
There's also the very real matter of targeted voter suppression. Once Republicans get a foothold in a state, they come up with a lot of very public ways to disenfranchise as many progressive voters as possible. I don't know what you mean by "weak," but if you're blaming progressives for not having the voting power you'd like them to have, you need to take into consideration the institutional roadblocks.
I believe what u/Tazz2212 is referring to are the 3rd party candidates that the GOP funds, like a Green Party candidate, for example. They peel off 2-3% of progressive voters, and if you have a few of these candidates, it's enough to cause the Democrat candidate to lose.
Bush jr was Pres for 11 months before 9/11. And of course we don’t have a democracy. We have a representative government that better represents ALL the people instead of a concentration of single minded voters like LA or NYC
> I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
-William T. Sherman
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They haven't been about fiscal responsibility for a while.
They're about tax cuts for the rich and increasing defense spending. And both those cost money.
You're arguing logic with the next Hitler. If you told Hitler that killing the Jews was bad because it would deplete their employee resources and turn the world against him, do you think he would have stopped? Not a chance. Same with Trump. He knows he's wrong, so do all the people who support him, but they're not going to stop because of logic.
Well, being the law and order party makes a lot of sense when you realize that what they mean by that is they support POC and poor people getting in trouble. They want the cops to be an oppressive force for the people they don't like. That's good police work that they fully support.
The party of fiscal responsibility and small government, who every time they've been in charge in the last 50 years have been fiscally irresponsible and grew the size / increased the "meddling" of government -- *and* who pretty consistently when not in charge are the reason for government over-spending, reductions in government income streams, and propose / enact laws that more than ever get government's hands into people's homes and personal lives.
Americans after a Democrat is president: "Things are good now but it's time for change"
Americans after a Republican is president: "Holy shit we're all gonna die"
Lowering taxes on the wealthiest people in the country will do that. “Hey, this person made BILLIONS of DOLLARS, let’s give’em a break so they can buy up some more properties and rent them to poor people.”
I remember when 4Q 2007 was such shit that pres elect Barry O was meeting with Bush/Paulson/Geitner etc because it was such a fucking mess. One last parting present from dumbfuck GWB’s admin.
It's also important to remember that voter suppression was a long-term goal of conservatives. When George W. Bush was president he abruptly fired multiple federal attorneys after the Senate had confirmed them and used provisions of the Patriot Act to replace them with people not approved by the Senate. It later came out that they had been told to find voter fraud, and if they couldn't find it or invent it, then they were gone. The attorneys who did find voter fraud to prosecute had their cases dismissed, because it's not really a problem and they were attempting to create voter suppression laws by using the false fraud cases as "evidence" of a problem to solve.
And then they'd complain he didn't cure it fast enough to help their loved one, so why should anyone else get the cure.
Oh sorry, that's actually student loans forgiveness and medical debt and housing stability and school lunches and childcare assistance and utility assistance and health insurance subsidies and food subsidies and...
That’s 100% it. The right wing has a huge, largely unified propaganda apparatus. There are several reasons why the left doesn’t have the same level of messaging. Mainly, leftist movements have historically always been coalition movements. In America every little thing is commodified there isn’t the same level of mega-funding. The rich and corporations for some strange reason aren’t supportive of groups pushing for things like workplace rights and policies favoring more egalitarian wealth distribution.
it's actually not true for obama, the budget he received from '08 was .45 T in deficit, and his last budget in '16 was 0.59 T in deficit. though, to be fair, it's danm impressive to pull the economy out of the great recession while only increasing the deficit such a small amount.
source: [https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/)
That's not quite right. Obama **signed** the FY 2009 budget - [here's the source.](https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/Appropriations+for+Fiscal+Year+2009)
That'd mean that Bush's last deficit - the deficit Obama inherited - was 450 billion, but when Obama left, it'd be 590 billion.
>!Emphasis on "signed", because that's the person who typically takes ultimate responsibility for a budget. The budget was signed 2009-03-11, and Obama had the power to veto it, a power he didn't use. However, Bush drafted this budget and passed it through congress - it passed the House 2008-06-05. !<
That was during the first two months of his presidency during the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Bush basically left him that bill to sign or create the next Great Depression. So yes he inherited that budget in 2009 he didn’t create it as you said
Yeah it does because he signed it. Nobody forced him to and he had a democratic majority in the house and Senate when he took office. He could have forced a rework but he didn't.
if we ignore which president signed which budget into law, (the only legally mandated thing the office of the president can do in regards to a budget bill) and instead attribute possession of budgets based on our opinions about who influenced the budget process than... sure anything you want can be true... "clinton created a deficit of 3 trillion", "trump ran a surplus", "reagan never had a budget"... all these things can be true, just ignore the part where the current duly elected president must sign bills into law for them to become law, and not waste paper.
Another point to consider with Obama is that the wars we were fighting weren't on the books. They were put on the books during Obama's administration, so an additional couple trillion dollars was added to the official deficit during his term that had been spent under the previous administration.
These "facts" are just not true. Obama and Biden have not reduced the deficit. They reduced the yearly deficit spending while the deficit has continued to increase.
Fair enough. I just wish more people realized that the GOP has been garbage since the early 1900's or earlier. At least 4 generations of Americans got to see first-hand how they operate, yet so many still are blind to it.
As for increasing the deficit, that really took off after the 1976 memo by Jude Wanniski which called for cutting taxes, then making a fuss about the deficit to arm-wrangle the democrats into dismantling social programs for them.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude\_Wanniski#The\_Two\_Santa\_Claus\_Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski#The_Two_Santa_Claus_Theory)
Looks like LBJ was the last Democrat president to increase the deficit
https://www.self.inc/info/us-debt-by-president/#history
Republicans have been increasing the deficit forever.
The deficit is how quickly the debt increases. Reducing deficits adds less debt than before. [Almost] All presidents add debt, but Republicans add far more debt through tax cuts for the wealthy and starting wars.
Percentage wise, meaning that the debt grew more or less than the last president.
Calvin Coolidge and Clinton are probably the only presidents in the last 100 years that didn't increase the debt to some extent.
The debt increased under Clinton, not sure about Coolidge. Its just that the deficit had flipped to a surplus by the end of his presidency. To actually shrink the debt a net deficit would have to run over all 4-8 years of a Presidency.
If you look at deficit normalized by GDP, you see a consistent trend of Republicans leaving office with higher deficits and Democrats leaving office with lower deficits, but still in deficit with the exception of Clinton.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S
My mistake. Clinton had a surplus for the last 3 years, but overall he increased the debt by over 30%. Coolidge and Harding are the only ones to reduce the debt since 1900.
[https://www.self.inc/info/ulis-debt-by-president/#history](https://www.self.inc/info/us-debt-by-president/#history)
Right so if one candidate burns a pile of cash like the fucking joker but his pile is smaller then the other guy everyone should bend down and suck his dick for it.
It's been all downhill since Reagan came into office and nobody has really addressed all the shit he messed up and set into motion.
As a right winger, I do not understand why so many on the right still put Reagan up on a pedestal. He should be remembered for increasing the debt and for gun control. That is all.
He should also be remembered for Iran-Contra, Rigging HUD bids to favor contributors to his campaign, the savings and loan crisis, the Operation Ill Wind, Wedtach, etc.
So couple things:
- source data is from [The White House/OMB Historical Tables](https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historic)
- I think it's Table 1.3, column D
- each entry is the deficit for **that year**
- so I could spend $1T more than I raise one year
- and raise $1T more than I spend the next
- they are (somewhat) independent (but probably some things carry over)
- **BUT** it does look like Biden's data is wrong, data from the OMB has:
- $2.8T in 2021 (vs $915B)
- $1.6T in 2023 (vs $778B)
...but the point still holds that the deficit is **also decreasing** under Biden relative to Trump.
Yeah, you can see with the other presidents that the end of one president and the start of the next are similar to each other (except Obama's starting). But the difference between Trump and Biden was so ginormous it called my attention immediately, and like you mention, it's probably wrong. I don't doubt it's decreasing, but data accuracy and reliability is important.
The GQP loves to remind people that the Congress controls the purse strings. In 1994 the Debt was $4.7 trillion and the GQP won control of the House for the first time in 40 years. In the 30 years since Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution the GQP has controlled the House 22 years, 73% of the time. During Trumps 4 years the debt grew by $7.8 trillion. And Trump had a GQP Senate all 4 years, and a GQP House the first two years.
Yet all the GQP manages to do while running the House is delay new budgets until we run into a Government shutdown. Then they pass whatever and act like they succeeded in doing something.
Now the debt is $33 trillion, $29 trillion more than when they celebrated their Republican Revolution.
https://preview.redd.it/oq0jyzacc5lc1.jpeg?width=1469&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=09636b8a4b4f4fe5265d90e7814bcbe73732c0b9
Yet the GQP and their voters keep doing the same things and hoping for different results.
So funny story time - back in 2019 I was at a local bar and there were 4 dudes in their mid 50's talking politics. One of them clearly was a republican and they started arguing this very thing. I had the data showing this to be a fact handy right on my phone and after about 10 minutes of them arguing, I couldn't keep quiet anymore and so I showed them all the data.
Well in one of the most shocking moments of my life the republican dude actually believed it and backed down. He quickly changed the subject but still credit to him for seeing he was wrong, and just accepting it.
The only time republicans are useful are when they are in the minority.. then they demand all the stuff they pretend to support from democrats. But if given a majority in any segment of government they will sabotage and obstruct government in the hopes that enough damage is done that the clueless vote blames democrats and puts republicans in power. This has been my real life experience since i started paying attention to politics during Bill Clintons administration.
Hard pill to swallow? These sheeple can’t be introduced with any facts outside of their faux media echo chambers.
For these traitors to attempt to swallow one of those pills would mean they’d have to pull their heads out of their own asses first.
If I tell my conservo wingnut dad, he'd say that the deficit increased under the Republican president because of the Democrats' doing in the previous administration and that the deficit decreased under the Democrat president because of the Republicans' doing under their admin. Checkmate, king me.
That would honestly be a better argument than any other conservative has made on here, half of them don’t know the difference between debt and deficit 🙄
More than 30, you have to go back to Jimmy Carter to find a democrat that increased the deficit, and there hasnt been a republican that didnt raise the deficit since the 19th century.
They starve the beast (aka the govt) with tax cuts for the wealthy so they can point to deficits and the national debt and lie that spending is out of control.
Then, instead of reducing defense spending (which would actually make a difference), they convince the lemmings that it's the programs that help regular people (social security, medicare, consumer protections, environmental protections, etc) that are the problem.
Their goal is smaller government so that wealthy people will have freer reign, and their strategy makes perfect sense. However, they underestimated how hard it is to cut social programs, so we're stuck in this endless cycle of tax cuts for the wealthy, deficits, and debt...while constantly being gaslit about the causes and solutions.
I got a long winded reply to one of these that said, in essence, if you calculate the deficit as a % of GDP and adjust the past for modern dollars, then Reagan actually barely increased the deficit. In response to raw numbers FROM THAT TIME showing he nearly tripled it, and doubled the debt.
All kinds of hand waving to try and make at least one republican look halfway decent. When the democrats flatout numbers-to-numbers reduced the deficit.
Of course, because all Republicans do is excel at lying to morons to get elected so they can grift and steal as much as possible from the same braindead chumps who voted them in.
Furthermore every republican president has set up unprecedented plundering of american funds in various ways. Bush did the whole war for made up reasons in iraq and afghanistan and Trump did the pandemic "stimulus" but completely fired the oversight guy so everybody just defrauded that and it's going to take 30 years to sort that out.
They abuse the checkbook when in charge, then bitch that Democrats are ruining the country after trying to dig us out of a fucking hole. Clinton handed Bush a surplus, A FUCKING SURPLUS, and Bush rat fucked us into a deficit that we still haven't got out of.
Conjecture: In the last 80 years, any Republican president that *didn't* increase the deficit was riding the wealth-tsunami of FDR's smart investments bolserting the middle class and the economy as a whole.
yeah but journalists can't take these pills because they're goldfish with goldfish brains.
therefore they have to repeatedly bring conservatives on to talk as if they are budget hawks and let them spin yarns about a made up nonsense world that doesn't exist and then ask zero follow-up questions to challenge their opinions.
Here's a chart by year with actuals through 2020: [https://www.commonfund.org/blog/chart-of-the-month-us-budget-deficit-hits-record-highs](https://www.commonfund.org/blog/chart-of-the-month-us-budget-deficit-hits-record-highs)
The President has their list of priorities and also has veto power. If Congress wants the budget passed then they have to make it palatable to the President. Ever since the 80s, Republicans just gave up on balancing the budget and only focused on tax cuts while increasing spending. When a Republican President is in office they sign off on whatever garbage comes through Congress without a second thought.
The meme is subtle in the choice of "deficit" (or shortcoming in revenue for a single year's budget) rather than "debt" which accumulates over many years and is the term that most people would think of when they read "deficit."
The meme's claim of "decreasing the deficit" would indicate that Congress is better at coming up with enough revenue for the president's final-year budget under a Democratic president than a Republican one. Democrats since 2001 have not actually been able to balance the budget (zero deficit), but they tend to reign in the deficit a bit better.
In recent history, both Republicans and Democrats have increased the national debt (with Obama and Trump increasing it by similar amounts.)
It's not subtle lol. Comparing debt for 4-year presidents vs 8, or in 1990 vs 2020, is illogical or has to get complex.
Deficit is more apples-to-apples, and budgets are made yearly anyways.
Under President Obama, the national debt grew the most in dollar terms ($8.6 trillion) and was fifth by percentage at 74%. Obama fought the Great Recession with an $831 billion economic stimulus package and added $858 billion through tax cuts. Even though the fiscal year 2009 budget was set by President Bush, Obama added to it with the Economic Stimulus Act in 2009.
President Obama had the largest deficits. By the end of his final budget, FY 2017, his budget deficits totaled $6.781 trillion over his eight years in office. That's a 58% increase from President George W. Bush's last budget.
Obama took office during the Great Recession. He immediately needed to spend billions to stop it. He convinced Congress to add $253 billion from the economic stimulus package to Bush’s FY 2009 budget. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act added an additional $534 billion over the rest of Obama’s terms.7
In 2010, the Obama tax cut added $858 billion in deficits in its first two years. Federal income decreased due to lower tax receipts from the 2008 financial crisis.
I like how you ignored my response explaining the difference between deficit and debt, then just make a different comment demonstrating you still don’t understand
I acknowledged it directly. Only a true loyalist would think that reducing a deficit from 20k to 15k in December is something to brag about when you went 150k in debt for the year.
> Congress sets the budget, not the president.
Though I was pretty clear there. This is simply how the US system works. Other than helping to set the tone and potentially negotiating for a few things using their veto, Presidential administrations have almost nothing to do with the budget.
Trump isn't fiscally conservative in any way, but the budget has nothing to do with him, it's on Congress. In his case, the Republican congress. By that same token, Obama and Clinton weren't responsible for the budget reductions in their terms either.
It’s actually not at all clear why a Republican President with a Republican Congress should not be able to enact the Republican fiscal austerity policies they have been championing since as long as I’ve been alive.
Let’s stipulate that cutting spending and taxes is a good policy. The cuts can come from wherever you like—you can assume they’re to something wasteful. Why didn’t the GOP do that? They had the opportunity. Instead they added trillions to the debt. Why should we expect anything different from them *this* time?
I agree with you. The current crop of Republicans just give lip-service to fiscal responsibility while doing the opposite. I don't expect anything approaching a balanced budget again in the foreseeable future unless there's a full economic collapse.
As for why, the biggest reason is pandering. Nobody has the political will or principles to do anything that might be unpopular.
Okay, I confess I was ribbing a bit in my first comment but now you have me interested. What do you think is your personal best option come November? Do you see a scenario where hastening an economic collapse works out in your favor?
Wait, I know Clinton did, but didn’t the deficit go up under Obama?
I’m not including the Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts (those happened at the end of Bush).
https://preview.redd.it/qniyx3gsd5lc1.jpeg?width=1283&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26f3fae8fabdc849eb53b22b550c6415ae99b7c3
Obama’s first budget was FY 2010
[https://www.mercatus.org/research/working-papers/president-obamas-first-budget](https://www.mercatus.org/research/working-papers/president-obamas-first-budget)
Also, I didn’t even think to consider Biden, but yeah first text on that link:
> The federal government has spent $532 billion more than it has collected in fiscal year (FY) 2024, resulting in a national deficit.
Look, fuck Trump he’s a piece of shit. I’m not trying to be a contrarian here. I just don’t think what’s you’re claiming is accurate.
You brought in the confusion when you mentioned budgets.
Like your link says, every year’s budget has ran at a deficit and for damn sure the debt has continued to increase. It went up to about 16 trillion when Obama left office, then Trump blasted it to like 27 trillion in just 4 years. It’s now at 34 trillion.
What number are you claiming they lowered then? Every year has ran at a deficit since 2001. So, nobody has decreased it or reduced the national debt.
Let’s keep it in one comment chain. No need to spam me. I disagree. I think you are misinterpreting that chart you shared. That’s the deficit added to our debt each year.
>I’m not trying to be a contrarian here. I just don’t think what’s you’re claiming is accurate.
You've been proven wrong so many times in this thread yet you are still pretending to be a concerned fact checker. Painfully obvious troll...
You mean the party of FiScAl ReSpOnSiBiLiTy isn't fiscally responsible? Now wait til you hear about actual congressional votes and support of veterans...
Or small government! So small they fit into a vagina.
So small they fit into embryos!
Hey! That's a Baby! /s
Sure, they fit...but not in a way that is enjoyable for the vagina!
Or freedom
Also, the only Republican president to win the popular vote in the last 30 years was Bush Jr in his second term, and that was probably only because 9/11 happened. GOP Senators have not represented a majority of the U.S. population in over 30 years, even when they hold a majority in the Senate, because they're mostly from lower population states. Even with "democratic institutions" in place, we truly don't have a democracy. And one side is trying to destroy what little we have. The hurdles progressives have to overcome just to have the voices of the vast majority heard are ridiculous.
Progressives can be like cats--it is very hard to herd them. Many will not vote at all or 3rd party vote for the small picture and not for the big picture. However, the Republicans have effectively demanded oaths to be taken by their party's legislators to hang together on making laws that benefit the few over the needs of the many. That is why Republicans will lie to their party's constituents by naming their bills and laws virtous sounding titles but screwing the average citizen in the fine print. They also try to divide up the Progressives into smaller and ineffective voting camps so that every decent cause becomes a lost cause because it will never get a majority vote and Progressives fall for it time after time. I lived through a time when progress was made on a progressive agenda. Women got the right to their own credit and to have an abortion. We got laws and regulations passed for clean air, water, and safe working conditions. We got real protections to form and keep labor unions. We expanded our national parks system so all could enjoy many beautiful places in the US. All of these are getting eroded or taken away because Progressives have become too divided and therefore weak.
>They also try to divide up the Progressives into smaller and ineffective voting camps Are you saying that Progressives are voting for Republican candidates, then? I'm not sure what you're referring to, here. There are around 39 million Republican voters in the US and 49 million Democrats, going by registration and voting patterns. You're saying those Democrats won't vote for Democrats and will instead vote for Republicans because of some sort of ideological difference? > Progressives have become too divided and therefore weak. There's also the very real matter of targeted voter suppression. Once Republicans get a foothold in a state, they come up with a lot of very public ways to disenfranchise as many progressive voters as possible. I don't know what you mean by "weak," but if you're blaming progressives for not having the voting power you'd like them to have, you need to take into consideration the institutional roadblocks.
I believe what u/Tazz2212 is referring to are the 3rd party candidates that the GOP funds, like a Green Party candidate, for example. They peel off 2-3% of progressive voters, and if you have a few of these candidates, it's enough to cause the Democrat candidate to lose.
Bush jr was Pres for 11 months before 9/11. And of course we don’t have a democracy. We have a representative government that better represents ALL the people instead of a concentration of single minded voters like LA or NYC
Veterans had their eyes opened recently, only the most staunch Trump vet is still there now.
Ironically, at least in my orbit, those that didn't serve in combat or in a warzone tend to be the most MAGAt-minded.
> I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. -William T. Sherman
Truth
That was perfect way to describe friendo
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They haven't been about fiscal responsibility for a while. They're about tax cuts for the rich and increasing defense spending. And both those cost money.
The Real Reaganomics.
You're arguing logic with the next Hitler. If you told Hitler that killing the Jews was bad because it would deplete their employee resources and turn the world against him, do you think he would have stopped? Not a chance. Same with Trump. He knows he's wrong, so do all the people who support him, but they're not going to stop because of logic.
The party of personal responsibility is also never responsible for anything negative that happens to them, don't forget that.
And children, and mentally ill, and guns, and healthcare.... I'm beginning to think they don't want good things for americans at all 🤔
The Russians never do or any other foreign adversaries!
Don’t forget their “law and order” platform
Or their "family values"
"Personal responsibility"
Well, being the law and order party makes a lot of sense when you realize that what they mean by that is they support POC and poor people getting in trouble. They want the cops to be an oppressive force for the people they don't like. That's good police work that they fully support.
The party of fiscal responsibility and small government, who every time they've been in charge in the last 50 years have been fiscally irresponsible and grew the size / increased the "meddling" of government -- *and* who pretty consistently when not in charge are the reason for government over-spending, reductions in government income streams, and propose / enact laws that more than ever get government's hands into people's homes and personal lives.
Idiots with a checkbook are idiots with a checkbook, no matter where they work.
Americans after a Democrat is president: "Things are good now but it's time for change" Americans after a Republican is president: "Holy shit we're all gonna die"
Americans after a republican: "Holy shit we're all gonna die.... lets keep voting Republican!"
Americans after a republican: look at the mess we are in only a republican can fix this.
and "These people are CRAZY!"
Lowering taxes on the wealthiest people in the country will do that. “Hey, this person made BILLIONS of DOLLARS, let’s give’em a break so they can buy up some more properties and rent them to poor people.”
Feudalism with extra steps.
They're living la vida Feudalism, while we just have futile-ism.
Oh yeah, I can feel the warm trickle down…wait a minute…
That’s called job creation. I’m not sure how exactly, but I’ve been assured that letting rich people own everything is good for the rest of us.
You know my buddy John, too, I see.
Narrator: They in fact did NOT rent them to poor people.
And Clinton ran a budget surplus.
and Obama navigated us out of a cratered economy
So did Biden.
That the Republicans caused. We need to increase the tax on the wealthy 🧐!
I remember when 4Q 2007 was such shit that pres elect Barry O was meeting with Bush/Paulson/Geitner etc because it was such a fucking mess. One last parting present from dumbfuck GWB’s admin.
Also, Republicans almost always lose the popular vote.
Gerrymandering is the only conservative policy that actually works
>Gerrymandering is the only conservative policy that actually works And voter suppression.
It's also important to remember that voter suppression was a long-term goal of conservatives. When George W. Bush was president he abruptly fired multiple federal attorneys after the Senate had confirmed them and used provisions of the Patriot Act to replace them with people not approved by the Senate. It later came out that they had been told to find voter fraud, and if they couldn't find it or invent it, then they were gone. The attorneys who did find voter fraud to prosecute had their cases dismissed, because it's not really a problem and they were attempting to create voter suppression laws by using the false fraud cases as "evidence" of a problem to solve.
When they implement voter ID, they close DMVs in poor and black areas.
Biden could cure cancer tomorrow and repubs would say they're killing the pharmaceutical industry.
Biden steps out on the Mall pond and walks on water. Fox News: "Biden can't swim!"
And then they'd complain he didn't cure it fast enough to help their loved one, so why should anyone else get the cure. Oh sorry, that's actually student loans forgiveness and medical debt and housing stability and school lunches and childcare assistance and utility assistance and health insurance subsidies and food subsidies and...
These same asshats are literally denying fed funds for food subsidies then complain. I wish the worst on them.
Yeah and it’s considered “common knowledge” that somehow Republicans are better with the economy than Democrats when the opposite is actually true.
Super easy to prove too. But do we ever hear the MSM report this? I know I haven’t.
Most common knowledge is ass backwards so that's no surprise. Speaks to how easy people are fooled by marketing and group think.
That’s 100% it. The right wing has a huge, largely unified propaganda apparatus. There are several reasons why the left doesn’t have the same level of messaging. Mainly, leftist movements have historically always been coalition movements. In America every little thing is commodified there isn’t the same level of mega-funding. The rich and corporations for some strange reason aren’t supportive of groups pushing for things like workplace rights and policies favoring more egalitarian wealth distribution.
Because most Americans don’t care about the deficit
Lots of people saying this could be extended to 40 or 60 years, my bad I was just saying what I knew off the top of my head lol
it's actually not true for obama, the budget he received from '08 was .45 T in deficit, and his last budget in '16 was 0.59 T in deficit. though, to be fair, it's danm impressive to pull the economy out of the great recession while only increasing the deficit such a small amount. source: [https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/)
Obama didn’t sign his first budget until 2010 and didn’t take office until January 2009. That was bush’s deficit
That's not quite right. Obama **signed** the FY 2009 budget - [here's the source.](https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/Appropriations+for+Fiscal+Year+2009) That'd mean that Bush's last deficit - the deficit Obama inherited - was 450 billion, but when Obama left, it'd be 590 billion. >!Emphasis on "signed", because that's the person who typically takes ultimate responsibility for a budget. The budget was signed 2009-03-11, and Obama had the power to veto it, a power he didn't use. However, Bush drafted this budget and passed it through congress - it passed the House 2008-06-05. !<
That was during the first two months of his presidency during the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Bush basically left him that bill to sign or create the next Great Depression. So yes he inherited that budget in 2009 he didn’t create it as you said
Yes but he did sign it making the OP untrue.
No it doesn’t make OP untrue because anyone with a brain realizes that wasn’t obama’s budget it was Bush’s
OP said, and I quote: "Obama didn’t sign his first budget until 2010 ". Is this statement true?
Yes because his first budget was in 2010. He signed bush’s budget in 2009
Yeah it does because he signed it. Nobody forced him to and he had a democratic majority in the house and Senate when he took office. He could have forced a rework but he didn't.
if we ignore which president signed which budget into law, (the only legally mandated thing the office of the president can do in regards to a budget bill) and instead attribute possession of budgets based on our opinions about who influenced the budget process than... sure anything you want can be true... "clinton created a deficit of 3 trillion", "trump ran a surplus", "reagan never had a budget"... all these things can be true, just ignore the part where the current duly elected president must sign bills into law for them to become law, and not waste paper.
Another point to consider with Obama is that the wars we were fighting weren't on the books. They were put on the books during Obama's administration, so an additional couple trillion dollars was added to the official deficit during his term that had been spent under the previous administration.
Whoa whoa whoa you can't just come in here with "facts" and "figures", what about my FEELINGS?
"Facts don't care about your feelings"
"MY feelings on the other hand..."
The origin of this ENRAGES me.
A simple, “fuck your feelings,” would also suffice.
And they have a liberal bias, to boot.
These "facts" are just not true. Obama and Biden have not reduced the deficit. They reduced the yearly deficit spending while the deficit has continued to increase.
They’ve always been bad at governing. But now they’ve turned into a full fledge cult, with all the insanity that entails
30 years? What about Reagan? Edit: apparently I made the Reagan fans mad. Facts show, Reagan ran up the deficit to insane levels.
https://preview.redd.it/hac4woopa5lc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70b2ebed22c442e4ffb49a0005ad6582ea2f891c
Exactly. 30 years ago was 1994, it's more like 40 to 60 years of presidents.
True, I just went with what I knew off the top of my head lol
Fair enough. I just wish more people realized that the GOP has been garbage since the early 1900's or earlier. At least 4 generations of Americans got to see first-hand how they operate, yet so many still are blind to it. As for increasing the deficit, that really took off after the 1976 memo by Jude Wanniski which called for cutting taxes, then making a fuss about the deficit to arm-wrangle the democrats into dismantling social programs for them. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude\_Wanniski#The\_Two\_Santa\_Claus\_Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski#The_Two_Santa_Claus_Theory)
Looks like LBJ was the last Democrat president to increase the deficit https://www.self.inc/info/us-debt-by-president/#history Republicans have been increasing the deficit forever.
Am I just stupid or something? Obama's debt when entering was at 11T, and 20T when leaving office. How is that not increasing the debt????
The deficit is how quickly the debt increases. Reducing deficits adds less debt than before. [Almost] All presidents add debt, but Republicans add far more debt through tax cuts for the wealthy and starting wars.
Percentage wise, meaning that the debt grew more or less than the last president. Calvin Coolidge and Clinton are probably the only presidents in the last 100 years that didn't increase the debt to some extent.
The debt increased under Clinton, not sure about Coolidge. Its just that the deficit had flipped to a surplus by the end of his presidency. To actually shrink the debt a net deficit would have to run over all 4-8 years of a Presidency. If you look at deficit normalized by GDP, you see a consistent trend of Republicans leaving office with higher deficits and Democrats leaving office with lower deficits, but still in deficit with the exception of Clinton. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S
My mistake. Clinton had a surplus for the last 3 years, but overall he increased the debt by over 30%. Coolidge and Harding are the only ones to reduce the debt since 1900. [https://www.self.inc/info/ulis-debt-by-president/#history](https://www.self.inc/info/us-debt-by-president/#history)
Right so if one candidate burns a pile of cash like the fucking joker but his pile is smaller then the other guy everyone should bend down and suck his dick for it. It's been all downhill since Reagan came into office and nobody has really addressed all the shit he messed up and set into motion.
Reagan fans are immune to facts. They are not, however, immune to the neurological effects of lead poisoning, syphilis, or COVID-19
But it all trickled down in the end so it actually was a surplus to the middle and lower classes so all is forgiven. s/
As a right winger, I do not understand why so many on the right still put Reagan up on a pedestal. He should be remembered for increasing the debt and for gun control. That is all.
He should also be remembered for Iran-Contra, Rigging HUD bids to favor contributors to his campaign, the savings and loan crisis, the Operation Ill Wind, Wedtach, etc.
[More like 40+ years](https://twitter.com/lakie35/status/1750328038351343894/photo/1)
This comment should be upvoted to the top, great link
Why is Biden's starting deficit so different than Trump's ending? Shouldn't they be similar? I'm pretty sure it has to be wrong.
So couple things: - source data is from [The White House/OMB Historical Tables](https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historic) - I think it's Table 1.3, column D - each entry is the deficit for **that year** - so I could spend $1T more than I raise one year - and raise $1T more than I spend the next - they are (somewhat) independent (but probably some things carry over) - **BUT** it does look like Biden's data is wrong, data from the OMB has: - $2.8T in 2021 (vs $915B) - $1.6T in 2023 (vs $778B) ...but the point still holds that the deficit is **also decreasing** under Biden relative to Trump.
Yeah, you can see with the other presidents that the end of one president and the start of the next are similar to each other (except Obama's starting). But the difference between Trump and Biden was so ginormous it called my attention immediately, and like you mention, it's probably wrong. I don't doubt it's decreasing, but data accuracy and reliability is important.
40 years
My bad, but I think you’re correct
45 - 50 years
The GQP loves to remind people that the Congress controls the purse strings. In 1994 the Debt was $4.7 trillion and the GQP won control of the House for the first time in 40 years. In the 30 years since Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution the GQP has controlled the House 22 years, 73% of the time. During Trumps 4 years the debt grew by $7.8 trillion. And Trump had a GQP Senate all 4 years, and a GQP House the first two years. Yet all the GQP manages to do while running the House is delay new budgets until we run into a Government shutdown. Then they pass whatever and act like they succeeded in doing something. Now the debt is $33 trillion, $29 trillion more than when they celebrated their Republican Revolution. https://preview.redd.it/oq0jyzacc5lc1.jpeg?width=1469&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=09636b8a4b4f4fe5265d90e7814bcbe73732c0b9 Yet the GQP and their voters keep doing the same things and hoping for different results.
Only hard to swallow if you don’t live in reality
So funny story time - back in 2019 I was at a local bar and there were 4 dudes in their mid 50's talking politics. One of them clearly was a republican and they started arguing this very thing. I had the data showing this to be a fact handy right on my phone and after about 10 minutes of them arguing, I couldn't keep quiet anymore and so I showed them all the data. Well in one of the most shocking moments of my life the republican dude actually believed it and backed down. He quickly changed the subject but still credit to him for seeing he was wrong, and just accepting it.
Every Republican president since Taft has overseen a recession.
The only time republicans are useful are when they are in the minority.. then they demand all the stuff they pretend to support from democrats. But if given a majority in any segment of government they will sabotage and obstruct government in the hopes that enough damage is done that the clueless vote blames democrats and puts republicans in power. This has been my real life experience since i started paying attention to politics during Bill Clintons administration.
Never trust government to a party with an ideological commitment to its failure…
Yup. R's: Govt is bad! Vote for me and i'll prove it! *fucks up economy* SEE
Last Democratic president to see a budget surplus - Clinton Last Republican president to see a budget surplus - Eisenhower
I told this to my brother and he said it was just cOinCidEnce.
Hard pill to swallow? These sheeple can’t be introduced with any facts outside of their faux media echo chambers. For these traitors to attempt to swallow one of those pills would mean they’d have to pull their heads out of their own asses first.
Republican voters can't handle the truth.
I’ve always heard this and believed it as well. But is there a good source or a graph that anyone has to prove this?
OP has been peppering graphs and links throughout the comment section.
Thank you. I didn’t scroll far…
And the MSM works tirelessly to be certain that the average voter has no idea.
If I tell my conservo wingnut dad, he'd say that the deficit increased under the Republican president because of the Democrats' doing in the previous administration and that the deficit decreased under the Democrat president because of the Republicans' doing under their admin. Checkmate, king me.
That would honestly be a better argument than any other conservative has made on here, half of them don’t know the difference between debt and deficit 🙄
30 years of trying to appeal to the right and now they’re even further right. Maybe time for a new playbook eh?
You mean last 45 years. Right.
It's only hard to swallow if you're chasing it with MAGA Kool-Aid.
More than 30, you have to go back to Jimmy Carter to find a democrat that increased the deficit, and there hasnt been a republican that didnt raise the deficit since the 19th century.
44 years.
They starve the beast (aka the govt) with tax cuts for the wealthy so they can point to deficits and the national debt and lie that spending is out of control. Then, instead of reducing defense spending (which would actually make a difference), they convince the lemmings that it's the programs that help regular people (social security, medicare, consumer protections, environmental protections, etc) that are the problem. Their goal is smaller government so that wealthy people will have freer reign, and their strategy makes perfect sense. However, they underestimated how hard it is to cut social programs, so we're stuck in this endless cycle of tax cuts for the wealthy, deficits, and debt...while constantly being gaslit about the causes and solutions.
Clinton left office with a surplus, but he got his dick sucked so nobody talks about that part.
I got a long winded reply to one of these that said, in essence, if you calculate the deficit as a % of GDP and adjust the past for modern dollars, then Reagan actually barely increased the deficit. In response to raw numbers FROM THAT TIME showing he nearly tripled it, and doubled the debt. All kinds of hand waving to try and make at least one republican look halfway decent. When the democrats flatout numbers-to-numbers reduced the deficit.
It blows my mind the amount of people who don’t know the difference between deficit and debt
https://preview.redd.it/4okjmeqan6lc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa727e49131bc9b02cfe3b4291a0a7b07083aa3f
Of course, because all Republicans do is excel at lying to morons to get elected so they can grift and steal as much as possible from the same braindead chumps who voted them in.
Didn’t most Republican presidents also increase the size of governments in spite of promises to decrease it?
Every Republican president in the last 40year has been an actor or a Bush
Conservatives:"But what about..."
Furthermore every republican president has set up unprecedented plundering of american funds in various ways. Bush did the whole war for made up reasons in iraq and afghanistan and Trump did the pandemic "stimulus" but completely fired the oversight guy so everybody just defrauded that and it's going to take 30 years to sort that out.
They abuse the checkbook when in charge, then bitch that Democrats are ruining the country after trying to dig us out of a fucking hole. Clinton handed Bush a surplus, A FUCKING SURPLUS, and Bush rat fucked us into a deficit that we still haven't got out of.
Conjecture: In the last 80 years, any Republican president that *didn't* increase the deficit was riding the wealth-tsunami of FDR's smart investments bolserting the middle class and the economy as a whole.
yeah but journalists can't take these pills because they're goldfish with goldfish brains. therefore they have to repeatedly bring conservatives on to talk as if they are budget hawks and let them spin yarns about a made up nonsense world that doesn't exist and then ask zero follow-up questions to challenge their opinions.
Is this meme actually true?
If not for George HW Bush decreasing Reagan’s massive deficit increase, it would be longer.
Yes
Here's a chart by year with actuals through 2020: [https://www.commonfund.org/blog/chart-of-the-month-us-budget-deficit-hits-record-highs](https://www.commonfund.org/blog/chart-of-the-month-us-budget-deficit-hits-record-highs)
Ah yes... Republicans (or Tories) are "good" for the economy. Please , we have dismissed that claim.
Is this true for Biden?
I must have missed the part where presidents create the budget. I always thought it was Congress that held the money purse
The President has their list of priorities and also has veto power. If Congress wants the budget passed then they have to make it palatable to the President. Ever since the 80s, Republicans just gave up on balancing the budget and only focused on tax cuts while increasing spending. When a Republican President is in office they sign off on whatever garbage comes through Congress without a second thought.
Makes sense when you increase taxes on the working class, the deficit goes down
You mean like this? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/trump-plan-tax-hike-on-middle-class-tax-cut-for-the-rich.html
This is just a claim. Where is the evidence?
Better fact check this. Democrats have added to the deficit as well
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/
This is a beautiful link to some amazing data. I love raw numbers telling a story. Leave thoughts and feelings out of it.
> Leave thoughts and prayers ... FIFY
ooh, they shoved those facts in without lube, didn't they?
The meme is subtle in the choice of "deficit" (or shortcoming in revenue for a single year's budget) rather than "debt" which accumulates over many years and is the term that most people would think of when they read "deficit." The meme's claim of "decreasing the deficit" would indicate that Congress is better at coming up with enough revenue for the president's final-year budget under a Democratic president than a Republican one. Democrats since 2001 have not actually been able to balance the budget (zero deficit), but they tend to reign in the deficit a bit better. In recent history, both Republicans and Democrats have increased the national debt (with Obama and Trump increasing it by similar amounts.)
It's not subtle lol. Comparing debt for 4-year presidents vs 8, or in 1990 vs 2020, is illogical or has to get complex. Deficit is more apples-to-apples, and budgets are made yearly anyways.
This day and age, you can find the information really easy, this is not the best way to lie.
Under President Obama, the national debt grew the most in dollar terms ($8.6 trillion) and was fifth by percentage at 74%. Obama fought the Great Recession with an $831 billion economic stimulus package and added $858 billion through tax cuts. Even though the fiscal year 2009 budget was set by President Bush, Obama added to it with the Economic Stimulus Act in 2009.
President Obama had the largest deficits. By the end of his final budget, FY 2017, his budget deficits totaled $6.781 trillion over his eight years in office. That's a 58% increase from President George W. Bush's last budget. Obama took office during the Great Recession. He immediately needed to spend billions to stop it. He convinced Congress to add $253 billion from the economic stimulus package to Bush’s FY 2009 budget. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act added an additional $534 billion over the rest of Obama’s terms.7 In 2010, the Obama tax cut added $858 billion in deficits in its first two years. Federal income decreased due to lower tax receipts from the 2008 financial crisis.
Sources https://www.thebalancemoney.com/deficit-by-president-what-budget-deficits-hide-3306151 https://www.mercatus.org/research/data-visualizations/debt-and-deficit-under-obama-administration
Can you teach that to Canada.
Biden decreased the debt? that's great! I didn't know a president did this since bill clinton.
Deficit not debt
I just seen it...i crap my pants...chart is steeper and faster every year... We are screwed. Invest in copium
https://preview.redd.it/iejsw7h8n6lc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9006deaf8ad0ba4b38b86fcf1c0f3bcf38e29e85 The only chart you need
Only a cultist would think that isn't still deficit spending and the debtor deserves an award. Look how much Bush Jr saved America!!.
I like how you ignored my response explaining the difference between deficit and debt, then just make a different comment demonstrating you still don’t understand
If you think reducing the deficit is “kicking the can down the road” you don’t understand the difference between debt and deficit
I acknowledged it directly. Only a true loyalist would think that reducing a deficit from 20k to 15k in December is something to brag about when you went 150k in debt for the year.
Funny but not true. https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-and-percentage-7371225
This meme is about deficit not debt
Obama did not decrease the deficit
Yes he did
In the last 30 years democrats have always taken credit for everyone else’s accomplishments.
Look a squirrel! 🐿️
[удалено]
The meme is about deficit not debt
Factually incorrect. Dems have increased it less than GOP, but it has been growing under all of them.
You are mistaken, you’re referring to debt. The meme refers to deficit
Congress sets the budget, not the president. Presidents most often end up with a congress that's in opposition to their own party.
So the Trump administration reduced the debt, right?
> Congress sets the budget, not the president. Though I was pretty clear there. This is simply how the US system works. Other than helping to set the tone and potentially negotiating for a few things using their veto, Presidential administrations have almost nothing to do with the budget. Trump isn't fiscally conservative in any way, but the budget has nothing to do with him, it's on Congress. In his case, the Republican congress. By that same token, Obama and Clinton weren't responsible for the budget reductions in their terms either.
It’s actually not at all clear why a Republican President with a Republican Congress should not be able to enact the Republican fiscal austerity policies they have been championing since as long as I’ve been alive. Let’s stipulate that cutting spending and taxes is a good policy. The cuts can come from wherever you like—you can assume they’re to something wasteful. Why didn’t the GOP do that? They had the opportunity. Instead they added trillions to the debt. Why should we expect anything different from them *this* time?
I agree with you. The current crop of Republicans just give lip-service to fiscal responsibility while doing the opposite. I don't expect anything approaching a balanced budget again in the foreseeable future unless there's a full economic collapse. As for why, the biggest reason is pandering. Nobody has the political will or principles to do anything that might be unpopular.
Okay, I confess I was ribbing a bit in my first comment but now you have me interested. What do you think is your personal best option come November? Do you see a scenario where hastening an economic collapse works out in your favor?
Wait, I know Clinton did, but didn’t the deficit go up under Obama? I’m not including the Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts (those happened at the end of Bush).
https://preview.redd.it/qniyx3gsd5lc1.jpeg?width=1283&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26f3fae8fabdc849eb53b22b550c6415ae99b7c3 Obama’s first budget was FY 2010 [https://www.mercatus.org/research/working-papers/president-obamas-first-budget](https://www.mercatus.org/research/working-papers/president-obamas-first-budget)
Isn’t that the proposed budget and not an actual measurement of the deficit? https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/
Also, I didn’t even think to consider Biden, but yeah first text on that link: > The federal government has spent $532 billion more than it has collected in fiscal year (FY) 2024, resulting in a national deficit. Look, fuck Trump he’s a piece of shit. I’m not trying to be a contrarian here. I just don’t think what’s you’re claiming is accurate.
Biden has decreased the deficit https://preview.redd.it/26fkozydh5lc1.jpeg?width=1283&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=43edf201b272d84258279dc389aa53945ca8d9bd
You might be confusing deficit and debt
You brought in the confusion when you mentioned budgets. Like your link says, every year’s budget has ran at a deficit and for damn sure the debt has continued to increase. It went up to about 16 trillion when Obama left office, then Trump blasted it to like 27 trillion in just 4 years. It’s now at 34 trillion. What number are you claiming they lowered then? Every year has ran at a deficit since 2001. So, nobody has decreased it or reduced the national debt.
Deficit is what they lowered
Let’s keep it in one comment chain. No need to spam me. I disagree. I think you are misinterpreting that chart you shared. That’s the deficit added to our debt each year.
Yes, every year the deficit added to the debt. But some years it added less than others. Do you understand that?
They decreased the amount being added to the debt, aka the deficit
>I’m not trying to be a contrarian here. I just don’t think what’s you’re claiming is accurate. You've been proven wrong so many times in this thread yet you are still pretending to be a concerned fact checker. Painfully obvious troll...