

Which of America's Presidents was the biggest spender? - flavio87
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2011/08/americas-presidents-who-was-biggest.html

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TomOfTTB
There are a few major flaws in this measure. The first and most obvious is it
doesn't take into account income. Clinton, for example, had a massive amount
of tax revenue to play with so he could have spent more and still have
increased the debt less.

The second issue is it doesn't take congress into account. Particularly the
House whose Constitutional jobs is to control the purse strings. By that
measure George W. Bush and Barack Obama come off quite a bit worse since both
had clear majorities (I know that wasn't the case for any President since
Reagan but my knowledge of congressional majorities is non-existent before
that)

Finally there's the spill over effect. Reagan and Obama both walked into
pretty big messes and the government always spends more in a financial
downturn than it does in an upturn.

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bunderbunder
It particularly hits Obama hard; the majority of spending during his first
couple years in office were due to commitments from before his inauguration: a
couple wars plus TARP, the Bush stimulus (which was bigger than the Obama
stimulus, mind you), and suchlike.

It might not even be a terrible idea to count the Bush tax cuts in there. It
isn't officially counted as government spending for obvious reasons, but
realistically we might as well think of it as the fiscal policy equivalent of
deciding to take your paycheck straight to the bar even though you're up to
your eyeballs in credit card debt.

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jt11508
Congress spends, Presidents don't. Kind of a myth. Interesting data
nonetheless.

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Codayus
These rankings assume that signing a law that creates a new entitlement that
will entail large payoffs in future decades is "free". Being in office when
those promises come due is profligate. In reality, we should be using accrual
accounting, and book liabilities when they are incurred. This would more or
less upend the rankings. (Mind you, this would be very difficult. The
magnitude of the liabilities from PPACA are essentially incalculable at this
point.)

And on a related note, the rankings also assumes that there is no lag in terms
of fiscal policy. A president is responsible for everything done by the
government from the moment he takes office to the moment he leaves. But of
course, this is absurd. It may take a couple years to enact a new policy, and
another couple of years for the effects to start showing up in government
accounts. A big tax cut (or tax raise) might take a decade to work its way
through the economy, once you include knock-on effects like changes in
consumption or investment. More generally, it's trivially obvious that the
deficit in any given year is not only (or even mainly) the result of policy
enacted that year, or even during that administration (especially for the
first year or two of an administration).

And as other commentators have noted, all of this is assuming that presidents
even have control over the budget, taxation, and spending. They don't. At best
they can sometimes convince Congress to give their ideas a respectful hearing,
but rarely (if ever) will Congress simply enact a Presidential policy or
budget. (And that's when the same party controls the White House and Congress.
When they don't, they'll often enact the opposite policy just on general
principle.)

