The President that keeps spending and taxes in check is the one who will oversee a better economy absent wars, massive acts of terrorism or exploding bubbles.
I looked at data from 1959-2006, dividing the years into DDD=Dem WH, Dem Senate, Dem House;
DRR=Dem WH, Rep Senate, Rep House;
RDD=Rep WH, Dem Senate, Dem House;
RRR=Rep WH, Rep Senate, Rep House.
The first 2 columns show average annual percent change in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP and disposable income per capita. Disposable income accounts for personal current taxes, so it's a better measure of what families have to actually spend. However, personal current taxes includes taxes on income, including realized net capital gains, and on personal property. Also included in personal taxes are personal licenses. However, contributions for government social insurance are not included
. The other columns should be self-explanatory.
If you just compare parties, D's "win" on all but 3 of the 9 measures. But you get a different picture if you begin to account On 4 of the 9 measures shown, DRR gives the best performance, scores 2nd best on 2 other measures and scores last on 2 (federal taxes & all taxes as % of GDP). Conversely, RRR scores worst on 4 measures, 2nd worst on 3 others and only scores best on 1: federal taxes as % of GDP. But during this period, the only DRR years were under Clinton and the only RRR years were under Bush. To me this demonstrates very convincingly that the excellence of the Clinton years can be attributed to having a Republican Congress to block his excesses and force him to accept programmatic changes (e.g., welfare reform) that saved money. Between that and using the Reagan/Bush peace dividend to pay down the federal debt (and hollow out the military/intelligence in the process), Clinton left office with a pretty rosy economic picture (though it quickly became a recession before GWB could even plausibly affect the direction of the economy). Even so, the Republican Congress did not prevent federal taxes from reaching its highest average level (and total taxes did the same). Conversely, Bush and a Republican Congress did an excellent job of tax-cutting, but otherwise were not terribly good stewards of the budget. Even worse, overall government spending as % of GDP is at its highest level, which in combination with low taxes and mediocre GDP growth culminates in deficits averaging 2.7% of GDP. And if you look closely, you'll see that a Republican Congress is far more likely to discipline a Democratic president on the spending side than a Democratic Congress will with a Republican president. But nearly the opposite is true with respect to taxes. If one assumes that attaining Republican majorities in the House or Senate is well outside what is feasible to achieve within the next 2 weeks, then then the only "choice" facing voters is whether to seek DDD or RDD. If these figures did reflect pure and unambiguous causality and if Obama were a "typical" Dem, then on all measures but 2, we'd be better off with DDD than RDD! This conclusion doesn't even pass the sniff test, reflecting just how far out of the mainstream Obama and this very liberal group of Democrats in Congress is. It's a fair bet that an Obama administration--aided and abetted by Reid and Pelosi-- would perform worse on all 9 measures shown.
| Real GDP per Person | Real Disposable Income per Person | Total Unemployment Rate | Teen Unemployment Rate | Federal Taxes % of GDP | Federal Spending % of GDP | All Taxes % of GDP | All Gov. Spending % of GDP | Total Surplus/Deficit % of GDP | |
| D | 2.0% | 3.8% | 5.1 | 15.4 | 18.7 | 19.6 | 28.5% | 28.3% | 0.2% |
| R | 2.3% | 3.2% | 6.4 | 17.4 | 17.8 | 20.7 | 28.2% | 30.4% | -2.2% |
| DDD (14) | 1.9% | 3.8% | 5.3 | 15.6 | 18.2 | 19.8 | 27.5% | 27.4% | 0.0% |
| DRR (6) | 2.0% | 3.7% | 4.6 | 14.8 | 19.8 | 19.1 | 31.0% | 30.4% | 0.7% |
| RDD (16) | 2.1% | 3.2% | 6.3 | 17.1 | 17.9 | 20.5 | 28.2% | 30.2% | -2.0% |
| RRR (6) | 1.9% | 2.7% | 5.3 | 16.4 | 17.6 | 20.0 | 28.5% | 31.2% | -2.7% |