Mercatus CenterPosted on 04/25/2014 7:04:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Mother Jones does love found footage, doesn't it? The progressive mag's airing of Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comments at a fundraiser definitely hurt the former Massachusetts governor in his attempt to boot President Obama in 2012.
Now Mojo is back with the vid above, which the mag must hope will discombobulate Republicans and help put the brakes on a libertarian-leaning senator whose anti-war and anti-NSA stances draw long looks from disaffected liberals and lefties.
"Rand Paul: Jimmy Carter was better on the budget than Ronald Reagan" is how the vid begins. It shows the Kentucky senator in a variety of settings between 2007 and 2009 slagging St. Reagan as a spendthrift.
As Mediaite's Andrew Kirell points out, all of Paul's basic statements about spending under Reagan are absolutely true. The short version: Reagan spent like a drunken sailor and skipped out on the bill.
Here's a chart by Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy:
Paul is correct to say that Reagan was worse than Carter when it came to spending. As de Rugy does the math, Carter increased real spending 17 percent over the last budget of his predecessor, Gerald Ford. Over two terms, Reagan increased spending by 22 percent over Carter's final budget. On an annualized basis, then, Carter grew spending by 4.25 precent a year, while Reagan grew it by 2.75 percent. However, when expressed as a percentage of GDP, spending under Carter averaged 20.6 percent per year while Reagan averaged 21.6 percent. Spending typically really gears up in a second-term president's final years, so it's plausible to theorize that had Carter managed to stick around for eight years, he might have equaled or surpassed what the real-world Reagan managed. Note: The paragraph above has been edited to better reflect annual spending patterns.
When it comes to debt, there's no question that Reagan was worse. Over an eight-year reign, he tallied up $1.4 trillion in deficits, or an average of $177 billion per year. Carter—a famously cheapskate Southern Baptist—racked up just $253 billion over four years, for an average deficit of $63 billon per year. Tax revenue went up sharply under Reagan, for sure, but like a Hollywood big shot, he still managed to spend ever larger amounts, resulting in an average annual deficit of 4.1 percent of GDP. The Peanut Farmer From Plains? A relatively tiny 2.3 percent of GDP. (All this data if from the Congressional Budget Office.)
Far from being the budget hawk of lore, Dutch had no problem jacking overall spending through the roof, especially when it came to military spending. As Reagan's first budget director, David Stockman, told Reason in 2011:
reason: Reagan was famous for saying that government wasn’t the solution to the problem; government was the problem. Why wasn’t he more skeptical of Pentagon claims of what they needed and of where their financial estimates were coming from?
Stockman: That’s one of the mysteries of the time, I guess, and it’s one of the factors that led to the utter failure of spending control. He was utterly uninterested in any detail of the defense budget, of any of the claims for dollars made by the Pentagon. He gave them a blank check, without question, and that had a two-fold effect. One, it ballooned spending just as we were massively reducing the revenue. But second, it created an enormous political impasse. And that is, the spending increases were so huge in defense that it became almost impossible to get anybody to look at you with a straight face on Capitol Hill and say we’re gonna go after the food stamp program or school lunches, when you’re just showering tens of billions of dollars on ammunition accounts and spare parts replacements and a massive expansion of the Navy, which was totally uncalled for.
After trimming some programs early in his presidency, Reagan came around to pushing massive increases on just about everything, including education (a newly formed federal department he promised to kill upon taking office), Medicare (which he had denounced as "socialized medicine" in the early 1960s), and Social Security (before championing massive hikes in payroll taxes in his second term, he had once called for making Social Security voluntary).
In many ways, Reagan's late-life embrace of old-age entitlements may have been his worst spending legacy. Created to address very different times and a very different workforce, Social Security and Medicare were in dire straits by the 1980s and had Reagan tried, he might have been able to replace these fundamentally unsustainable and unfair transfer programs into more effective and lower-cost safety net programs. Instead he called saving Social Security and Medicare—a feat accomplished through massive increases in FICA rates—"the highest priority of my administration." By the end of his presidency, the combined employee-employer rate was 15 percent, up from 9.35 percent in 1981 (and more income was subjected to Social Security tax to boot).
CBOAs I argued the other day at The Daily Beast, Reagan is the "Godfather of Groupon Government," of huge and ongoing discounts to current taxpayers. Just as Groupon makes purchases more attractive by offering major price breaks, Groupon Goverment makes government goods and services more attractive by charging taxpayers much less than the retail price.
The Godfather of Groupon Government is none other than Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on killing whole cabinet departments and then presided over deficits that were so scandalously large that even Andy Warhol felt a need to comment on them. Starting in 1983, revenue increased every year under Reagan, but so did spending...leading to a tripling of the national debt on the Gipper’s watch.
Between 1974 (when new budget rules and accounting systems were put in place) and 2013, the CBO reports that total federal revenues averaged 17.5 percent of GDP while outlays averaged 20.5 percent of GDP. Expressed in terms of dollars, the government only charged Americans 84 cents per dollar of spending. Over the course of Reagan’s two terms, revenue only covered 82 cents, thus generously offering Americans an 18 percent discount.
Three or four years ago, I heard then-Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-Ind.) give a great talk to a group of conservatives. I can't reproduce the exact phrasing but the gist went something like this. Daniels talked about going to college in the late '60s and early 1970s. He talked about how there were always a bunch of lefties and progs around on campus, talking about FDR and the New Deal and how it hadn't gone far enough. Daniels said he'd tell those folks to get bent (again, the phrasing isn't exact), because the New Deal was like 30 years ago, man, and it doesn't have very much to do with today's America.
So far, so good. Conservative-libertarian audiences like peeing on campus radicals and FDR. Daniels pulled some applause and hoots. But then he went on to say something that was really fricking awesome. He pointed out that here "we"—Republicans, he meant, or maybe fiscal conservatives more broadly—were in the 2000s and all "we" could do was invoke St. Ronald Reagan like he was the second coming of Jesus H. Christ (again, not his phrasing). Daniels looked around the room and said, You know, we're further in time from Reagan than those half-baked New Dealers were when I was in college. We've got to get new ideas, new policies, and a new vision of government. Times have changed. America has changed. Budget realities have changed.
The room was silent. Even the crickets were sitting on their hands (or whatever crickets have). In the movie of my mind, I'd like to think that I started a slow clap that eventually caught on and Mitch Daniels was carried out jubilantly by the crowd, kind of like Debra Winger is by Richard Gere at the end of Officer & a Gentlemen.
But of course none of that happened. Around the same time Daniels had also famously called for cease fire in the culture wars and for Republicans to focus on spending issues (the governor didn't mince words about how awful his former boss, George W. Bush, had been). Conservatives jumped all over him like pit bulls on a steak. Because he has a mind and was a serious thinker about policy, Daniels once discussed the effects of a possible V.A.T. tax during a talk about the legacy of Herman Kahn and was pilloried for that.
He left the podium that night having pissed off the very people who needed to hear his message the most, passed on a presidential run, and is now the president of Purdue University. If there was ever a victim of epistemic closure on the right, it was Mitch Daniels.
The point is: Take on Reagan's legacy and you're playing with fire. Especially if you're right about Reagan's terrible record on spending, which Rand Paul absolutely is. I used to think that the GOP would never move forward until it fully acknowledged just how utterly awful George W. Bush's presidency really was. Across every possible dimension—with the possible exception of immigration reform, where Dubya essentially created the DREAM Act that fills Republcan lawmakers with nightmares about cantaloupe-calved illegals "hauling 75 pounds of marijuana aross the desert"—Bush was a big-government disaster. Despite stated interest in a top-to-bottom makeover, the GOP isn't really interested in changing all that much of its general platform or vibe. Until they are, they can kiss libertarians goodbye, along with other rising segments of America. The GOP's one big ace in the hole is that they run against Democrats. But even that wears off.
Rand Paul is interested in doing things differently (check out this Google News capture of recent articles about the guy). He's actually reaching out to minority voters by talking about school choice and how free markets will help alleviate poverty and lack of opportunity. He's proposed budgets that actually cut government spending. He's the loudest political voice for civil liberties in an age of ubiquitous government surveillance. He's pushing back against exaggerated fears of voter fraud and dumbed-down arguments about global warming. He's smart on military spending, which is to say he's against limitless defense spending and blunderous foreign policy.
He's not perfect from a libertarian angle—no politician is—but he is a damn serious threat to the Republican establishment. And to the Democratic status quo too. Which explains both why conservatives and establishment Republicans are going after him and lefty progs want to see him take a powder. And why his star is rising among the growing number of political independents who are sick of living in a fantasyland of the past and a thoroughly disappointing present. When the knives come out to cut him down to size—from the right and from the left—I hope he has the guts to stick to his libertarian guns.
Over the past dozen-plus years, we've seen what conventional Republicans and Democrats have to offer America, and it ain't pretty. Change is needed and it ain't going to be easy. But that just makes it more important to fight for.
Carter served one term: 17% increase
For two terms that would work out to a 34% increase.
Reagan had a 22% increase.
Reagan also had to work with a Democrat Controlled House and Senate.
Carter had a Democrat Controlled House and Senate. He could have cut spending if he wanted to, and could get his den of thieves to go along.
Reagan didn’t have that chance.
During Reagan revenues soared.
The Dems have a real problem coming to grips with that. He cut taxes. That’s something they can’t admit or it destroys their theory of governance.
Looks as if every president was more thrifty than his successor based on that bar chart.
Yeah, carter even turned off the lights on the Christmas Tree.
Actually none of the spending increases were his fault. The military/national defense portion of the budget, or when measured as a % of GNP, scarcely moved in the 1980s. What grew were “Payments to individuals,” by about 15%. Straight from the government’s own budget books.
One thing they ALWAYS neglect to mention is:
WHAT Democrats spend on vs. WHAT Republicans spend on...
And, what our Founders INTENDED the government to spend on.
Makes a LOT of difference.
I see some jumping on the bait to defend Ronald Reagan against JIMMY CARTER? Good grief. Get a grip folks. It is not worth the time or energy. This BS article is helpful however as it does expose Rand Paul as someone with no analytical skills and who has no business being a Republican much less a president.
That’s actually amazing if true, because Reagan refurbished our military forces after Carter let things go so badly during his term.
Reading some of this is chilling. Rand Paul... Daniels..., do either of these people understand who controls spending in Washington, D. C.? Do they understand the impact on spending if the Democrats control the House and Senate? Do they know who controlled the House and Senate in the Reagan years?
They talk about Reagan spending as if he had this great big check-book and spent his days and nights writing checks the nation couldn’t afford. Yep, “That mean old man Reagan. He was just the worst!”
This article is tripe.
Part of the reason the spending on Reagan was higher, was because Carter butchered the military during his term in office. Someone had to rebuild our forces and Reagan was stuck with the task.
Anyone remember that failed raid in Iran to rescue the hostages? That was Carter’s idea of a properly run military. Reagan knew better.
People that wish to dissect Reagan better put on their big boy pants and do more work. The guy was even better than he gets credit for.
Note that Obama is the model of efficiency don’t you know...
LOL
Reagan had to rebuild the Military that Carter helped destroy.
Reagan had to deal with a Legislature dominated by Democrats to get anything done. Those same Democrats failed to hold up their end of the negotiations when it came to the agreed to spending cuts in exchange for Tax Increases.
Reagan won the Cold War, Carter lost the Cold War.
Federal Tax Revenues doubled under Reagan.
Of course, none of this matters nowadays. Everything Reagan did to make the United States of America the greatest Nation the World has ever known is being torn down by Obama and his sycophants.
I thank God that I was around to see what America could be under Reagan’s great Leadership. Now I am just saddened and disgusted to see what unchecked Liberalism Power is doing.
I am not saying everything Reagan did worked out for the best, i.e. Immigration Amnesty, but Reagan was still the greatest President in my lifetime, period.
This is right as far as “under Reagan,” but Reagan didn’t push for the domestic spending. The democrat congress is responsible Reagan is responsible for military spending, which turned out to be an excellent investment in the long run.
Reagan had 435,000 Americans on the Soviet border, we were ditching our old WWII and Vietnam war goods and buying Kevlar helmets and Gore-Tex gear to equip our troops who's combat area was in the European theater, we were building a 600 ship Navy, taking on the Soviet Union all over the globe, and when Reagan and the Pentagon were finished, the Soviet Union was defeated.
The best spent money the world has ever seen, I hope we never return to those days of wondering if "this day" is going to be the end of civilization, but the fact is, Reagan gave the world a generations long breather from that certain nuclear annihilation.
Reagan had to outspend the USSR in the military programs. It’s what finally brought the Commies to their knees.
So yea he outspent Carter, but at least it was money well spent.
Ayn Rand truly despised Reagan and did not vote for him, the best election the libertarians have ever had was running against Reagan in 1980.
Off the top of my head, Reagan repaired two problems left behind by past presidents and congresses that almost instantly improved US and lead to decades of economic growth and prosperity for US and the world: our screwed up tax code and our decimated military.
Fixing the tax code's graduated punishment on achievement spurred growth and innovation that lead to an invigorated economy.
Rebuilding the military was expensive but absolutely necessary and lead to the fall of the Soviet empire. Modernizing and rebuilding our military was of such value that most of our current air force and weapons came from his time in office.
He did these things in spite of the demonrats in Congress and the many critics in the now one stream media, thanks to a Reagan lead reinvigorated Republican party and the support of an approving grass roots.
Not bad for an old guy.
Re: “Rand Paul is interested in doing things differently.”
Yesterday, Rand Paul advocated that all illegal aliens should be given a path to “work visas.”
How is that different?
Every serious, honest observer of American politics understands that is also the first step on a path to citizenship and 12 million new Socialist voters.
That's a bad mistake.
GDP can be very volatile and can move up and down for many reasons that have nothing to do with who is president.
It is much more helpful to compare presidents on a “per capita” basis.
Namely:
GDP per capita.
National Income per capita.
Government Spending per capita.
Tax Revenue per capita.
Quoting Stockman won’t win many converts. Stockman was a status quo bureaucrat.
The left, and libertarians, are purist. They always point to his deficits. By today’s standards they were nothing.
His last three fiscal years the deficits were around $150B a year. Today they are over $1 Trillion a year.
Reagan did not have the line item veto.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.