Sorry, I meant to respond earlier...
LS: "The point was, NO president since TJ until Harding significantly cut spending."
Well... no.
As I look down my spreadsheet at the column headed "average annual Federal spending per president" I see pretty much what you'd expect after major wars: spending exploded during the war and went down afterwards.
But just to pick out a few interesting periods:
- President Washington averaged $6 million per year.
- President John Adams averaged $8.7 million per year.
- President Jefferson averaged $9.4 million
- President Madison averaged $23 million (War of 1812)
- President Monroe averaged $20 million (note reduction)
- President John Quincy Adams averaged $18 million (another reduction)
- President Jackson averaged $22 million (and PAID OFF THE NATIONAL DEBT!)
- President Van Buren averaged $35 million (political spoils?)
- Presidents Harrison & Tyler averaged $26 million (frugal Whigs!)
- President Polk averaged $43 million (Mexican War)
- Presidents Taylor & Fillmore averaged $50 million (not so frugal Whigs)
- President Pierce averaged $68 million
- President Buchanan averaged $82 million
- President Lincoln & Johnson averaged $599 million (Civil War)
- President Grant averaged $320 million (post-war reduction)
- President Hayes averaged $287 million (end of reconstruction)
- Skipping ahead to President Wilson averaged $5,637 million (First World War)
- Presidents Harding & Coolidge averaged $4,164 million (note post-war reduction)
- President Hoover averaged $4,037 million (last administration to reduce federal spending in actual dollar terms).
The above list includes every administration which actually reduced federal spending, but only a sample of those which increased it.
Of course, other methods can be used to measure spending, such as inflation adjusted, or as a percent of GDP, and those do show more reductions than this particular list.
So here is the bottom line: only four administrations ever reduced federal spending outside of a natural post-war reduction:
- D-R President John Quincy Adams (1825-1828)
- Whig Presidents Harrison/Tyler (1841-1844)
- Republican President Hayes (1877-1880)
- Republican President Hoover (1929-1932)
Interesting to note that all served only four years and are generally ranked "unsuccessful".
Run some numbers of personnel per capita. Also, note that we had land sales as a MAJOR source of revenue and Jackson benefited from the sale of the entire Louisiana purchase. I don’t recall each statehood date, but from Monroe to AJ you had MO and ME come into the Union, but really you were just beginning to see the sale of federal land in MS, IL, and other border areas.
So, it’s pretty easy to pay off the debt if you a) don’t have a major war and b) can sell off millions of unused acres.
It would be interesting therefore to go back over this list and look at the admission of western states and then the subsequent presidents budgets.