Bill
Since the Bush Administration is being held up as a paragon of fiscal virtue, let’s take a trip down memory lane to back 2000, a few years before you begin your elegant graphical exposition of the divergent spending paths between administrations. I don’t share your graphical wizardry (and I’m envious!) so I’m going to shamelessly borrow a chart from elsewhere.
The chart shows that after a few blessed years uinder Clinton, the relentlessly increasing gap we both deplore resumes in 2001. Three things happened in that year
1) The Republican dominated Congress passed a colossal tax cut, which concentrated its benefit among wealthier citizens.
2) The same geniuses created a new huge, unfunded mandate, the Medicare Drug program.
3) We went to war, with no plan how to pay for it
The blue line in my purloined graph illustrates that the increase in spending as a percentage of GDP under Obama is due in no small part to the decline in GDP (although to be fair, spending has also risen)
I’m all for living within our means. I just don’t think we should wreck the economy in order to do it
Eli
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