If Americans need an example of true fiscal responsibility, they can
look at the state of the economy under a fiscally responsible Democrat,
President Barack Obama.
One of the predictable aspects of any Republican campaign is their
promise to bring fiscal responsibility to government, rein in federal
spending, slash debt and deficits, and foster an economic boom unseen in
human history by giving the rich greater tax cuts. By now only a person
who has been comatose for the past thirty-five years is unaware that
fiscal responsibility is contrary to any Republican’s economic agenda.
An agenda that entails higher spending, greater debt, and fewer
services for the people under the guise of budgetary constraint. Those
policies are not and have never been fiscally responsible; they are
fiscally responsible and unique to every Republican juntas’
economic failure.
If Americans need an example of true fiscal responsibility, they can
look at the state of the economy under a fiscally responsible Democrat,
President Barack Obama. It was mentioned slightly earlier this month,
but worth noting again; the Treasury Department
reported “
a shrinking federal deficit”
of $439 billion for fiscal year 2015. Those numbers are not only the
lowest since 2007, they are lower than predicted earlier this year. In
fact, the Treasury Department also
reported that in the final month of fiscal 2015 the “
federal government ran a budget surplus.”
However, it is not just that the actual dollar amount is the lowest
since before the Republican-created Great Recession and economic
catastrophe. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “
the Federal deficit is now lower than the average going back to 1965” when it is measured, as it typically is, as a portion of the size of the nation’s entire economy.
When measured as a percentage of the overall economy, for fiscal 2015
the federal deficit was 2.5 percent of GDP; the historical 50-year
average stands at 2.7 percent. That figure is more than noteworthy, but
particularly so because every Republican, deficit hawk, and conservative
economist claims that President Obama is like every Democrat; “an
out-of-control spending machine” driving the nation into catastrophic
and unsustainable debt. What Republicans will never say is that when it
comes to fiscal responsibility, Barack Obama is setting the standard
Republicans could never achieve.
The falling budget deficit is all the more impressive because when
Barack Obama entered the White House, the shrub left him a $1.3
trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2009. That number represented 10
percent of the nation’s GDP revealing that President Obama’s
“turnaround” is over seven points. Real fiscal responsibility is cutting
a huge deficit by over three-quarters within six years. All while
saving the nation’s economy from certain catastrophe, paying for the shrub’s two unfunded wars and tax cuts for the rich, creating millions
upon millions of jobs, and enacting health care insurance reform for
millions of Americans.
The last fiscally responsible president, Bill Clinton, had a very
typical and respectable Democratic “turnaround” after Republican debt
creation, but as remarkable as it was, President Obama’s is better. Bill
Clinton inherited another Republican’s budget deficit that was “roughly
4 percent of GDP” that he turned into a 2 percent of GDP surplus in
eight years. But President Obama can boast a 7 point turnaround in six
years while suffering through four years of an extremely hostile
Congress and six years of Republican malfeasance designed to destroy any
chance of economic recovery.
Americans have witnessed for themselves exactly what happens under
Republicans’ vaunted “fiscal responsibility” at the federal level during
the last Republican junta; the rich got monumental tax cuts,
debt and deficits exploded, government spending ballooned, and services
were slashed. If Americans are too memory-challenged to harken back to
the shrub era’s Great Recession and $1.3 trillion budget deficit as a
parting gift, they can look at the current effects of
fiscally-responsible Republican governors and legislatures in states
such as Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Wisconsin to get a real-time
demonstration of how badly Republicans fail at being fiscally
responsible. If Americans want to see a real-time example of what
Democratic fiscal responsibility looks like and they refuse to see
President Obama’s success at the federal level, they should look no
farther than California.
Under successive Republican juntas and legislatures all
promoting their economic agenda and policies as epitomizing “fiscal
conservatism and responsibility,” California fell so deeply in debt its
credit was considered “junk” and Republicans borrowed the state into
near-bankruptcy. All the while, none of the borrowed money went to the
people in the form of government programs because it barely covered the
tax cuts for the wealthy. Today, after a Democratic governor and
legislature brought real fiscal responsibility to bear on Republican
economic insanity, the state is thriving with a budget surplus, the
Republicans’ debt are being erased, and the people’s services are being
restored.
After hearing Republican pretender candidates continually boast
that only a Republican can reduce debt and deficits by being fiscally
responsible, it was refreshing to see the Treasury’s report that no
administration, especially no Republican junta, has been more
fiscally disciplined or responsible over the past 50 years than
President Obama. Republicans definitely need a lesson in what it means
to truly be fiscally responsible, but until they abandon their “precious
fiscal conservatism” gospel that entails out-of-control spending and
increasing budget deficits, they will just have to dream of being as
fiscally responsible as Barack Obama; a point the mainstream media will
never report.
