I have not taken a position with regard to the selection of a new Chair of the DNC. I do think that whoever gets the position needs to work to change the perceptions of the two major parties. One area in which such change is needed is with regard to the federal budget deficit.
It has been said that the public perceives Republicans as the Daddy party and Democrats as the Mommy party. In terms of fiscal responsibility, that needs to change. Democrats should be seen as the Parent party while Republicans should be viewed as the Drunken Student On Spring Break With His Daddy’s Credit Card party.
President Bush recently submitted his fourth budget. The administration projects a unified budget deficit of $427 billion for FY 2005. With a projected Social Security surplus of about $167 billion, President Bush is running an on-budget deficit of $594 billion this year alone.
There are about 131 million individual taxpayers in the US. The on-budget deficit amounts to more than $4,500 per taxpayer in this year alone.
In his four budgets, President Bush has run up a little over two trillion dollars in on-budget deficits. That works out to more than $15,000 of debt for each American taxpayer in just four years. In-state tuition at the University of Georgia is about $4,000 per year. For the average Georgia taxpayer, it costs about the same to send a kid to college as to have George W. Bush as President.
The Bush administration argues that the deficits are the result of recession, terrorist attack, and war. A brief review of history suggests that big deficits Republicans run large deficits regardless of those factors.
The Congressional Budget Office lists the on-budget deficits from 1962 through 2004. Beginning in 1962 is fortuitous since that is the first budget of President Kennedy and, with the latest budget numbers, we now have a picture of on-budget deficits of the last eleven Presidential terms. Those terms include five Democratic administrations (Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton I and Clinton II) and six GOP terms (Nixon, Ford, Reagan I, Reagan II, G.H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush I). For our purposes each “term” consists of the four budgets submitted (thus the G.W. Bush “term” runs from FY 2002 through FY 2005).
Over the last 44 budgets, the cumulative on-budget deficits have been 6.088 trillion dollars for an average yearly deficit of about $138 billion. Budgets submitted by Democrats exceeded that average on only three occasions. Those three instances were the first three years of the first Clinton term as the inherited $300 billion on-budget deficit was eventually elimunated and replaced by an $86.3 billion surplus.
Republicans, on the other hand, have exceeded the average on 15 occasions, the last seven years of Reagan budgets and all eight years of Bush and Bush.
In all, the twenty budgets submitted by Democratic Presidents resulted in cumulative on-budget deficits of $1.094 trillion dollars. Mr. Bush has run up a greater cumulative deficit in the last two years than the total of the last 20 budgets submitted by Democrats.
Republican Presidents have submitted 24 budgets that resulted in cumulative deficits of more than $4.5 trillion. Interest on that debt ran about 4.3% in FY 2004 (See here and here for the data from which the rate can be calculated). Thus, we are spending about $193.5 billion per year, or about $1,500 per taxpayer per year, on interest accumulated under the last 24 GOP submitted budgets.
Some argue that it is unfair to use the raw numbers when comparing deficits. The proper measure, they say, is to use the on-budget deficit as a percentage of GDP. They do have a point.
Lyndon Johnson, for instance, tried to fund the Great Society while also fighting the Viet Nam war. That resulted in the on-budget deficit growing from $1.6 billion in 1965 to a high of $27.7 billion in 1968. While the raw numbers may look small, the 1968 on-budget deficit was 2.7% of GDP. If you are too young to remember that time, I assure you that the GOP thought that a budget deficit of 2.7% of GDP would lead to the fiscal ruin of the country.
Of course, each of the last 16 Republican submitted on-budget deficits have exceeded 2.7% of GDP. Indeed, the 16 worst on-budget deficits in the last 44 years have been submitted by Republican Presidents.
One person running for DNC Chair is Howard Dean. One of his most attractive lines during his Presidential campaign was:
Republicans simply can't handle money.
Stan Chess (En Passant http://lawtv.typepad.com/en_passant/2004/a_question_of_l.html) writes "kaplan's Concord School of Law says it's one of the largest law schools in the country, yet for each administration only about 25 of its graduates sit for the bar exam. What happens to the hundreds of other students in each class?"
According to the New York Times: Recently, a number of for-profit colleges have faced inquiries, lawsuits and other actions calling into question the way they inflate enrollment to mislead/increase the value of their parent company’s stock.
In the last year, the Career Education Corporation of Hoffman Estates, Ill., has faced lawsuits, from shareholders and students, contending that, among other things, its colleges have inflated enrollment numbers. The company acknowledged that it was under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In February 2004, F.B.I. agents raided 10 campuses run by ITT Educational Services of Carmel, Ind., looking for similar problems.
Kaplan is wholly own by the Washington Post Company. I provided the S.E.C., Department of Education, and federal courts information that appears to prove Kaplan inflated the Concord School of Law enrollment, telling investors that the “flagship” of its higher education division has as many as 600 to 1000 or more students.
Why didn’t the Justice Department and S.E.C. included Kaplan with their investigation?
What's stunning is that over $400 billion of that $427 billion goes to the DoD. And with all other agencies seeing significant budget cuts, Defense saw its budget grow by 7%. (Not to staff or veterans, mind you - they're getting shafted as along with the rest of us.)
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