Republicans Are Responsible For Most Of Deficit

The Republicans, especially congressional Republicans, are doing a lot of whining about the deficit these days. They would like for people to believe that the deficit is the fault of President Obama and the Democrats, and the only solution is to let the Republicans abolish Medicare, privatize Social Security, and slash dollars from all other social programs. To say this is pure hogwash is to put it mildly.

So how did the country get into a situation where we currently have a federal deficit approaching $1.5 trillion? If we go back to the year 2000, the last year of Democrat Bill Clinton's presidency, we find that while there was some national debt (which was being paid down) there was actually a surplus in yearly revenue for the federal government. When Clinton left office, he left the incoming Republican president (George Bush) with a budget surplus of about $236.4 billion a year. At that time, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that if nothing was done by the new president the budget surplus would grow to about $800 billion a year by 2009.

And Bill Clinton created that surplus without cutting social programs, without abolishing or privatizing Medicare and Social Security, and with a tax rate that was lower than at any time since World War II. Whatever else one might think of Bill Clinton, he left the country in good fiscal shape (much better than he found it, since both Reagan and Bush-I had left the country with large deficits).

But Bush-II (George W.) could not leave well enough alone. He instantly instituted more tax cuts (most of which went to the rich) even though the top rate was already lower than with his Republican predecessors. This act alone cost the government over $400 billion a year and instantly threw the government into a deficit situation. He had promised Americans that the tax cuts would actually produce more revenue for the government (an old Republican lie), but now evrn his own economic experts admit that did not happen. Less revenue came in and the deficit was created.

That would have been bad enough economically, but Bush then had to start two unnecessary and unwinnable wars -- Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. These wars have siphoned billions of dollars from our economy (and still cost the U.S. about $2 billion a week). By 2003, Bush had turned the budget surplus he had inherited into a deficit of $304 billion, and it continued to grow throughout his presidency.  By the end of his presidency, Bush-II had raised the total national debt from about $5.6 trillion to over $10 trillion dollars (nearly doubled it).

Then in the last year and a half of his presidency, the bottom fell out of the economy and the nation fell into a massive recession (with at least 12 million jobs being lost). This was largely due to the Republican "trickle-down" policies of Reagan and Bush-II, where they gave huge subsidies to corporations, deregulated Wall Street and the financial giants, gave massive tax cuts to the rich, and suppressed unions and wages for workers. This resulted in the worst wealth and income inequality since before the Great Depression, and was the main cause of the current recession. The recession (and huge job losses) resulted in even less revenue coming in to the government -- a problem that persists to this day.

When Wall Street melted down, Bush-II then gave them a huge bailout -- further increasing the deficit. So while Bush-II had inherited a large budget surplus, he left President Obama with a massive budget deficit. To be fair, President Obama has only increased the Bush-II deficit. Part of this is due to the recession he inherited, but a good portion is also due to his continuation of Bush policies (such as massive tax cuts for the rich, unneeded corporate subsidies, and the continuation of both of Bush-II's wars). He campaigned on change, but we are still waiting for a change in economic policy.

Now the Republicans want us to believe the deficit is all Obama's fault. He's got to shoulder his share of the blame, but most of it can still be laid at the feet of George W. Bush. And the Republican solution is to double-down on the failed Bush policies (and abolish Medicare as a bonus). It would be laughable if it wasn't so scary.

All we can hope for is that these Republican politicians have overstepped the boundaries of good sense by wanting to abolish Medicare and give the rich more tax cuts (both of which are opposed by the majority of Americans), and this will be recognized by the voters in 2012.