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mactbone
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Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Sep 2001
time: 23:17
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I obviously can't comment on the issue, because I don't have enough years on me.  So I found this.
Published in 1996
quote:
Bush-Clinton: What Went Wrong?
by Stephen Moore
Stephen Moore is director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute.
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America is now in the eighth year of what might be called the Bush-Clinton era of governance. To Bill Clinton, this era has been a stunning success story. He boasts in his new budget that the United States now enjoys "a growing economy with the lowest combined rates of unemployment and inflation in 30 years." Clinton also trumpets "cutting the deficit in half in the last 3 years" and producing the "smallest federal government since the 1960s."
Here is the unpleasant reality. In the 1990s the economic and fiscal record has been substantially worse on every economic measure than it was in the 1980s and previous post-World War II decades.
In assessing the policies of the 1990s, it is useful to investigate the Bush and Clinton presidential terms together, because both administrations have enacted similar domestic initiatives: higher income tax rates, substantial increases in domestic spending, dramatic declines in the military budget and reregulation. In the 1980s Reagan pursued precisely the opposite agenda. Moreover, the major economic policy event during the Bush administration, the 1990 budget deal, was reaffirmed by Clinton's defining "achievement": the 1993 "$500 billion deficit reduction plan."
After seven years of the Bush-Clinton era, virtually every objective budgetary and economic measurement shows deterioration, not improvement (see table). Here are some of the striking fiscal results:
1) Tax hikes have failed to produce revenues. The top marginal income tax rate has risen by 50 percent--from 28 percent in 1989 to 42 percent (including the Medicare tax) this year. Income tax receipts have risen at an 18 percent slower rate with tax increases in the 1990s than they did with tax cuts in the 1980s. If overall tax collections had simply grown in the 1990s at the rate they did in the seven years following Reagan's 1981 tax cut, the budget deficit would be almost $70 billion lower this year.
2) A 30 percent build-up in real federal nondefense spending. It is a widespread myth that federal outlays on civilian programs have been constrained as a result of the 1990 and 1993 budget deals. Nondefense spending now consumes 18 percent of national output. Federal spending on civilian programs now accounts for a larger share of national output than at any previous time in American history. In 1995 dollars federal nondefense spending has surged by $250 billion since the end of the Reagan presidency.
3) Runaway spending on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare. In constant 1995 dollars, since 1989 real Medicare spending has grown by $75 billion or 73 percent, Medicaid spending has grown by $47 billion or 112 percent, and welfare spending has climbed by $93 billion or 72 percent.
4) A one-third decline in the military budget in the post-Cold War era. Defense spending now constitutes a smaller share of the federal budget than at any time in American history. Defense cutbacks of roughly $100 billion since 1989 have helped camouflage the large nondefense spending increases in the 1990s.
5) Record high budget deficits in the 1990s. The annual average budget deficit (in 1995 dollars) under George Bush and Bill Clinton ($248 billion) has been slightly higher than even under Ronald Reagan ($242 billion) and much higher than under any previous president. Deficits as a share of gross domestic product have been lower in the 1990s than in the 1980s. The difference between the high deficits of the 1980s and the high deficits of the 1990s is that the Reagan deficits were accumulated during a period of military build-up, whereas deficits in the 1990s have corresponded with a drawdown of the military. This is the first time in American history that a postwar period has produced giant deficits. In most postwar periods, the budget is balanced, and in some cases a surplus is achieved.
Although the budget deficit improved to $162 billion in 1995, the long-term deficit forecast, assuming a continuation of the Bush-Clinton policies, remains bleak. A December 1995 Congressional Budget Office report predicts that the budget deficit will rise every year, climbing back to above $250 billion by 2000 and up to $350 billion by 2005, unless the Bush-Clinton policies are abandoned.
The nation's economy has also underperformed in the 1990s under Bush and Clinton relative to the results of the 1980s. The good news is that inflation has been low, 3.6 percent, and unemployment has been held in check, averaging 6.4 percent. But other measures of economic health are far more discouraging:
· Sluggish economic growth. Using the new "chain-weighted" GDP numbers, the economic growth rate from 1989 to 1995 has averaged a meager 1.8 percent. That compares with a 3.2 percent growth rate in the 1980s and a 4.9 percent growth rate in the 1960s. Even during the cyclical recovery since the end of the 1990-91 recession, economic growth has averaged below 3 percent per year. If economic growth in the 1990s had kept pace with growth in the 1980s, national output would be $400 billion higher today. The slow-growth policies of the 1990s are the equivalent of a $3,500 permanent annual loss of income for every American household.
· Slow job creation. Low unemployment today is a result of very slow growth in the labor force, not a robust job market. In January, in fact, the nation lost 200,000 jobs. From 1989 to 1995 civilian employment in the United States crept upward by just 1.1 percent per year. In the 1980s job creation was twice as rapid. If the first half of the 1990s had produced jobs at the rate of the 1980s, 5.2 million more Americans would be working today.
· Declining family income. Americans are doing worse in the pocketbook. Census Bureau data reveal that since 1989 median family income has fallen by 5 percent, or $2,100. This reverses a 11 percent gain in real median income from 1981 to 1989.
Both Presidents Bush and Clinton came to office promising to outperform Reagan on the economy and the budget. Both made deficit reduction a top priority of their administrations, even promising to balance the budget in four years.
The result of the repudiation of Reaganomics has been perhaps the poorest seven-year economic record since the Depression. Overall economic and job growth has been half the 1980s level. Average real deficits have been higher under Bush-Clinton than under Reagan, though as a share of GDP they have been lower. The message for Republicans as they pursue their agenda for the 105th Congress: reclaim the Reagan message and repudiate Bush-Clinton economics.
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http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-13-96.html
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orange
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It doesn't matter what your name is!
Feb 2000
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Oh, orange... just realized something (no wonder)
You DO realize that chart is until 1983... sorry, I remember Reagan's adminstration lasted until 1989!
Deliberatly taking numbers that show the worst and ignoring those that don't show the whole picture? |
You claimed that they went down by half...they didn't, they went up by half. Yes, they did return to what they were in 1980, but you're still wrong. If I steal 5 dollars from you and give it back next year, have I dont anything good? And even though you've got your 5 dollars back, I've still done something wrong.
quote:
We were still in recession in those years. FED chair Volker was clamping down on inflation... which leads, naturally to higher unemployment (inverse relationship). And they did clamp down. Afterwards the economy took off |
No it didn't, 1987 was another speed bump on rons superhighway And the national debt was skyrocketing the whole time...any of this ring a bell?
quote:
Try to tell the whole story next time, k? |
Alls I had to do was show where you were wrong, and I still didn't 'mislead' anyone. I gave you the link...it was all right there.
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yin26
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This space reserved for Darkstar.
Apr 1999
time: 14:17
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Imran: I don't care what the polls say now. If a prophet can be ignored in his own country, certainly an Idiot can be praised there in the short term. Give it another 20 years. By then you'll also have the added benefit of actually earning your own paycheck.
One of the things that really frightens me about these Reagan freaks is they mix Jesus-halucinations in the mix. Here's just one such Reagan Cult Member:quote:
As we fight to denounce Liberalism, through the ways of Reagan, we will stand as a beacon of light to those in search of truth, freedom, and the Reagan way...We people who know of Reagan and understand his principles need to take the message to the street...and through the struggles we will be heard, we will win, we will be victorious.
So lets go out there and be Reagans. |
So, my fellow Apolytoners: Have you asked Reagan into your hearts? For he knocketh at the door and needeth only letting in-eth.
Last edited by yin26 on 06-02-2002 at 07:47
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mactbone
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Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Sep 2001
time: 23:17
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Wheee, unemployment!
quote:
Clinton V. Reagan On Jobs
President Clinton claims that two million new jobs were created per year during his watch. But when analysts measure it in terms of creating full-time jobs, the Clinton administration's record is that of an also-ran.
During the 1983-88 Reagan economic recovery, the increase in hours worked translated into an average 2.2 million new full-time jobs per year.
The period following the 1973-74 recession saw the creation of 2.6 million new full-time jobs each year.
But the current economic recovery has seen less than 1.6 million new full-time positions created each year.
Further, job growth should be judged relative to the number of workers. And the working-age population is now almost 9 percent larger than it was in the Reagan years.
In the 1983-89 expansion, new full-time jobs were 119 percent of population growth.
In the Clinton years, new full-time jobs have been just 64 percent of the increase in population.
Moreover, the economic expansion began before Clinton assumed office. And even some Democrats agree with economists who point to the dampening effects of the Clinton income-tax rate hikes targeted at the key job producing sector of the American economy: small business.
In 1993, the Democrat-controlled Joint Economic Committee of Congress -- seeking to justify the so-called "economic stimulus package" -- warned that Clinton's fiscal policy would "continue to exert downward pressure on economic activity throughout the next five years." The committee was unanimous, and included such liberal notables as Ted Kennedy.
Source: Editorial, "It's Clintonomics, Stupid," Investor's Business Daily, April 11, 1996.
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http://www.ncpa.org/pd/economy/ecoa4c.html
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Maj
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I'm not much of an economist or political scientist, but given that much of today's markets are supported by hype and controlled by greed & fear, wouldn't there always be boom-bust cycle regardless of who occupied the Oval Office? How much influence do the presidents and their administration actually have on the state of the economy?
- Maj
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:17
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Terror, protectionism, payroll tax increases, corporate welfare, attacks on civil liberties, bloated military budgets, useless deficit spending, monetarism, etc.
quote:
By telling them "Government is evil. Fear the government. Hate big government. Government is the root to all evil!"??? |
Ronnie did more than telling that to the American public; he proved as well. 
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Apolyton Time is 00:17. |
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06-02-2002 07:30
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