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Should we expect a large expansion of federal spending under Clinton?

mmi

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Under Clinton42, federal outlays as a percentage of GDP fell from 21.1% in 1992 to 17.4% in 2000. The figure is now less than it was was when Bubba was inaugurated.

federal_spending_as_perc_GDP_1960_2015.jpg

Republicans will very likely maintain control of the House over the next four years. Is it reasonable to fear that a Clinton45 administration would push the ratio back up much higher than 20%, where it was every single year 1981-93 under Reagan and his unfortunate successor?
 
Under Clinton42, federal outlays as a percentage of GDP fell from 21.1% in 1992 to 17.4% in 2000. The figure is now less than it was was when Bubba was inaugurated.

View attachment 67205328

Republicans will very likely maintain control of the House over the next four years. Is it reasonable to fear that a Clinton45 administration would push the ratio back up much higher than 20%, where it was every single year 1981-93 under Reagan and his unfortunate successor?

Read the Constitution. Congress, and the party in control of Congress, control both the amount of money appropriated for spending, and the amount of money borrowed or taxed to cover the spending - not the President. Clinton-42 agreed, after having his arm twisted almost completely off, to negotiate with the US House of Representatives (specifically Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich since the House is the chamber where revenue bills must originate) to lower spending and balance the budget. The problem, is that the GOP used to be the party of fiscal responsibility - they are no longer even close to fiscally responsible, and spend money just about as fast as Democrats. Not quite as fast, but damned near. With the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, we as a country have the best chance of lower spending, balancing the budget to stop deficit spending, and get the National Debt under control since the time that Gingrich and Clinton-42 agreed to work together, because Ryan is arguably the most capable and intelligent budget expert to grace the House in over 50 years.
 
"Should we expect a large expansion of federal spending under Clinton?"

Of course. You should expect it from any politician. Spending is the basis for their power.
 
Read the Constitution. Congress, and the party in control of Congress, control both the amount of money appropriated for spending, and the amount of money borrowed or taxed to cover the spending - not the President.

Read it yerself. No budget can be enacted without the president's signature unless it can survive a veto.

>>Clinton-42 agreed, after having his arm twisted almost completely off, to negotiate with the US House of Representatives

The facts belie that rhetoric.

President Clinton's economic plan proposes making $253 billion in spending cuts over four years by eliminating some programs and cutting back others. (source)​

The Clinton plan is a $496 billion package of new taxes totaling $242 billion and spending cuts of $253 billion with two-thirds of the monies generated going to deficit reduction and one third to long-term investment. The president also included a $29.2 billion short-term stimulus package. (source)​

>>the House is the chamber where revenue bills must originate

Try reading The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which requires that the president send a budget proposal to the Congress.

>>the GOP used to be the party of fiscal responsibility

Yes, under Dwight Eisenhower it was.

>>With the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, we as a country have the best chance

With Clinton in the WH, yes.

>>Ryan is arguably the most capable and intelligent budget expert to grace the House in over 50 years.

Ryan has indeed shown that he will stand up to the teabugger lunatics that controlled the House 2011-2015 with only about fifty votes. I hope and expect that will continue.

any politician. Spending is the basis for their power.

I'd say popular support is.
 
Read the Constitution. Congress, and the party in control of Congress, control both the amount of money appropriated for spending, and the amount of money borrowed or taxed to cover the spending - not the President. Clinton-42 agreed, after having his arm twisted almost completely off, to negotiate with the US House of Representatives (specifically Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich since the House is the chamber where revenue bills must originate) to lower spending and balance the budget. The problem, is that the GOP used to be the party of fiscal responsibility - they are no longer even close to fiscally responsible, and spend money just about as fast as Democrats. Not quite as fast, but damned near. With the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, we as a country have the best chance of lower spending, balancing the budget to stop deficit spending, and get the National Debt under control since the time that Gingrich and Clinton-42 agreed to work together, because Ryan is arguably the most capable and intelligent budget expert to grace the House in over 50 years.

Exactly.

I don't want to argue about who loves spending more, but the bottom line is that it's wrong to simply blame the President. Everyone is complicit.

The GOP certainly makes more noise about fiscal responsibility, but when you look at their counter-plans to Obama's over the last few years, for example, one sees that their plans are designed to fail just as his - each party wants to make a point about what counts more than trying to figure out what, reasonably, will work and where any sort of compromise might lay.
 
Under Clinton42, federal outlays as a percentage of GDP fell from 21.1% in 1992 to 17.4% in 2000. The figure is now less than it was was when Bubba was inaugurated.

View attachment 67205328

Republicans will very likely maintain control of the House over the next four years. Is it reasonable to fear that a Clinton45 administration would push the ratio back up much higher than 20%, where it was every single year 1981-93 under Reagan and his unfortunate successor?

Expressing outlays as a percent of GDP during periods of time when GDP is going ape**** says more about GDP than federal outlays. GDP surged in the nineties thanks in large part to a tech bubble and stock bubble. By setting your timeframe in just such a way as to express a partisan political agenda, we know what you're up to.

Do yourself a favor, pretend for a minute you have no idea who happened to be President and during what period of time, and then look at the same data and trends from 1985 to 1995, then from 1995 to 2005, then from 2005 to 2015. Your attempts to spin economic trends into partisan politics will probably fall apart.
 
Expressing outlays as a percent of GDP during periods of time when GDP is going ape**** says more about GDP than federal outlays.

I figure it says something about both. The economy expanded at a healthy rate, but I sure wouldn't call it ape****.

Federal outlays grew by 32.2% 1993-2001, while GDP expanded by 56%.

Federal outlays grew by 116% 1981-93, while GDP expanded by less — 104%.

What happened to the fiscal responsibility and the booming economy during those years? The data don't seem to support those characterisations.

>>GDP surged in the nineties thanks in large part to a tech bubble and stock bubble.

Completely unsupported. I'd point to the Information Revolution that drove large increases in productivity and the Clinton fiscal policy that included a large increase in taxes on wealthy households.

>>By setting your timeframe in just such a way as to express a partisan political agenda, we know what you're up to. … [L]ook at the same data and trends from 1985 to 1995, then from 1995 to 2005, then from 2005 to 2015.

Supply a different time frame if you don't like mine. I posted a graph that goes from 1960-2015. What do the data for the years you cited indicate?

>>Your attempts to spin economic trends into partisan politics will probably fall apart.

I'm just describing the data. If you think I'm spinning, let's hear it.
 
I figure it says something about both. The economy expanded at a healthy rate, but I sure wouldn't call it ape****.

What the economy did between 1992 and 2000 is not "a healthy rate" by any historical standard. That it happens to coincide with a Democratic Party presidency is super convenient for partisan fools. Extend Clinton's presidency to 2003 and see how convenient your little storyline would be.

Completely unsupported.

It's completely unsupported that a tech and stock bubble had something to do with GDP in the nineties? You're dismissed.

Supply a different time frame if you don't like mine.

I just did. I segmented the timeframe in a way that is inconvenient for your partisan rhetoric.
 
What the economy did between 1992 and 2000 is not "a healthy rate" by any historical standard.

Completely unsupported. What would you say is a healthy rate?

>>That it happens to coincide with a Democratic Party presidency is super convenient for partisan fools.

Clinton benefited from the Information Revolution. He also did things to help the economy in other ways.

>>Extend Clinton's presidency to 2003 and see how convenient your little storyline would be.

What happened to tax rates on wealthy households under Bush43? What happened to the economy in Sept 2001?

>>It's completely unsupported that a tech and stock bubble had something to do with GDP in the nineties?

You provide nothing to back that up.

>>You're dismissed.

I graciously accept yer rather pathetic surrender.

>>I just did.

No you didn't. You just gave some time frames. What about them?

>>I segmented the timeframe in a way that is inconvenient for your partisan rhetoric.

You didn't say anything about them. What's yer point?
 
Completely unsupported. What would you say is a healthy rate?

>>That it happens to coincide with a Democratic Party presidency is super convenient for partisan fools.

Clinton benefited from the Information Revolution. He also did things to help the economy in other ways.

>>Extend Clinton's presidency to 2003 and see how convenient your little storyline would be.

What happened to tax rates on wealthy households under Bush43? What happened to the economy in Sept 2001?

>>It's completely unsupported that a tech and stock bubble had something to do with GDP in the nineties?

You provide nothing to back that up.

>>You're dismissed.

I graciously accept yer rather pathetic surrender.

>>I just did.

No you didn't. You just gave some time frames. What about them?

>>I segmented the timeframe in a way that is inconvenient for your partisan rhetoric.

You didn't say anything about them. What's yer point?

Look at your own data without thinking about who the President happened to be at any particular point in time. It tells a different story. If Obama had become President in 2005, the storyline of his presidency would be vastly different. In 2005 he'd have had no hope of preventing the housing bubble, and it would look as if the world was falling apart shortly after he took over the world's most powerful country. If Bob Dole had become president in '97 it would appear to a lot of fools that he was the most successful president ever, unless he was still President between '01 and '03 in which case it would have appeared that he destroyed the country.

If you stop convincing yourself that the President determines everything that happens in the world by virtue of his occupation of the Oval Office, you'll look at economic trends and think about policies, not figureheads. Tax policy, monetary policy, financial sector regulation, and so forth. To even attempt to frame the economic discussion of the US over the past 25-35 years in terms of who was President when inherently dumbs down the discussion of what is economically best for the country.

Is it your goal to dumb down this discussion?
 
Is it your goal to dumb down this discussion?

As is so often the case, yer doing a great job at that yerself, and so I'd say you don't need any help in that regard.

>>If Obama had become President in 2005, the storyline of his presidency would be vastly different. In 2005 he'd have had no hope of preventing the housing bubble

If a Democrat had been elected in 2000 or even in 2004, there never would have been a god damn housing crisis. Who do you think yer fooling? You think it fell out of the sky?

Which party has been railing for decades against "excessive and burdensome gubmint regulation that ties the hands of entrepreneurs and retards economic growth"? I suppose yer gonna be trying to sell the nonsensical crap about the Community Reinvestment Act and Franklin Raines and Barney Fag. Well, people with even half a brain aren't buying.

The Republicans got the civil rights legislation of the 1960s enacted, right? See Barry Goldwater. The War on Poverty, which saw it reduced by fifty percent 1965-2000, was a complete and utter failure, right? It was the Republicans, who said we could "do business" with Hitler and his Nazi henchmen, who won the Second World War, correct? This slimy garbage makes me puke.

>>it would look as if the world was falling apart shortly after he took over the world's most powerful country.

Amazing. Truly amazing. What did the world look like in late Jan 2009, when Obuumer did take over? The world was NOT falling apart in 2005 or 2006 or 2007. By the beginning of 2008, when the Negro was in the middle of his run for the WH, yes, the freakin' world was about to fall apart. What bizarre version of history have been living through?

>>If Bob Dole had become president in '97 it would appear to a lot of fools that he was the most successful president ever

I have no idea what yer talking about. Care to explain that one?

And here's the point. Mr Dole was NOT elected, and guess what, it wasn't some sort of coin toss. He got beat by eight-and-a-half points and 220 electoral votes. The country was halfway through Bubba's very successful presidency and that's why he WAS re-elected. That's how these things work, but you can't seem to understand that.

>>unless he was still President between '01 and '03 in which case it would have appeared that he destroyed the country.

In what sense? How was the country "destroyed" in those years? And would Dole have listened to Dickhead Chaingang and Donnie Dumbsfeld and invaded Iraq Mar 2003? Would most of his NSA team have ignored warnings of an imminent attack within the US by Al Qaeda and missed the opportunity to avoid the 9/11 disaster?

>>If you stop convincing yourself that the President determines everything that happens in the world by virtue of his occupation of the Oval Office, you'll look at economic trends and think about policies, not figureheads.

Yer simply taking an important consideration, the idea that events in our domestic economy and in foreign affairs do not begin and end in ways that are totally synchronised with presidential elections, and seeking to employ it to buttress a totally absurd argument that presidents don't really do much of anything to influence economic and foreign policy. BS sophistry, easily exposed as mindlessly foolish.

>>Tax policy, monetary policy, financial sector regulation, and so forth. To even attempt to frame the economic discussion of the US over the past 25-35 years in terms of who was President when inherently dumbs down the discussion of what is economically best for the country.

So where do these policies come from? Why bother having presidential elections or even having a president at all? The Reagan tax cuts that exploded the debt and accomplished nothing positive were, what, decided by a roll of the dice? And the reversal of that policy under Clinton was … something that got pulled out of a hat? We go back to SSE under Bush43. Why? Enh, cuz the wind was out of the south that day. Obummer's ARRA and ACA? Just a random change of the channel on a TV.

>>Look at your own data without thinking about who the President happened to be at any particular point in time. It tells a different story.

Well, I asked you to describe that story, and I'll credit you with having done so. But yer version would be found in the fiction section, and properly in children's fiction.
 
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If Obama had become President in 2005, the storyline of his presidency would be vastly different. In 2005 he'd have had no hope of preventing the housing bubble

If a Democrat had been elected in 2000 or even in 2004, there never would have been a god damn housing crisis. Who do you think yer fooling? You think it fell out of the sky?

First of all, given the degree of segmentation of people's posts you engage in, you really need to learn to multi-quote. << >> is no good. The way to do it is to type [] with the world quote between them and the [] with /quote between them. Just do that for each segment of a person's post your want to quote.

Now to your supposed content. You're alleging a Democratic President would have averted the housing crisis. Cite this claim with any assertions from any Democrat warning against the inclination to use a housing credit expansion to combat the effects of the 1990s stock bust. In other words, just support your claim.

The rest of your post is utter partisan sh**. If you cared about economics you wouldn't be so desperate to spin it into a tale about how one political party's president is so great and how another's is so terrible. Most of any given President's signed-into-law policies doesn't reap its full effect until several years after he's left office.

Your political bias requires ignoring this.
 
First of all, given the degree of segmentation of people's posts you engage in, you really need to learn to multi-quote. << >> is no good. The way to do it is to type [] with the world quote between them and the [] with /quote between them. Just do that for each segment of a person's post your want to quote.

Blah, blah, blah. I post the way I want to. If you don't like it, TFB.

>>You're alleging a Democratic President would have averted the housing crisis. Cite this claim with any assertions from any Democrat warning against the inclination to use a housing credit expansion to combat the effects of the 1990s stock bust. In other words, just support your claim.

As I said, which party has been railing for decades against "excessive and burdensome gubmint regulation that ties the hands of entrepreneurs and retards economic growth"? When you've answered my very simple question, I'll consider taking up yer research assignment.

>>The rest of your post is utter partisan sh**.

And yet you offer absolutely NOTHING to refute it. Interesting. Sure looks like just another pathetic surrender to me.

>>If you cared about economics you wouldn't be so desperate to spin it into a tale about how one political party's president is so great and how another's is so terrible.

Last year, when a RW idiot told me I was "desperate" about something, I said I was desperate to have children stop drowning in the Mediterranean. I haven't heard much about that lately, but perhaps it's just everyday stuff now and not considered newsworthy. What am I desperate for now? I want the Red Sox to get things going in the right direction before we throw away another season. The situation is on the verge of becoming desperate.

As for yer BS point about my supposedly "spinning" the effectiveness of respective presidential foreign and domestic policies along partisan lines, there's sure no need to be "desperate" there.

Johnson's and Nixon's involvement in Southeast Asia was a monumental disaster. Bush41 did the best he could in a difficult situation handed to him by his incompetent predecessor. Other than that, I'd say it's clear that Reagan and Bush43, although they were well-intentioned, were basically major eff ups, while Clinton42 and the Negro have very strong records. That's just the way things are.

I'm a Democrat for the same reasons they are — liberal policies work. Liberalism has generated almost all the social progress we've experienced over millennia, including the founding of the USA. Conservatism can play a vital role, preserving the gains achieved through liberalism. Reactionary morons who claim to be conservatives are only a serious drag on the whole process.

>>Most of any given President's signed-into-law policies doesn't reap its full effect until several years after he's left office.

There's some truth to that, I'd say, but what examples would you point to? The SEC? Social Security? Medicare? The civil rights statutes? Nixon's EPA? TR's reforms of business practices early in the twentieth century? All liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiibrul policies. See how that works? Party isn't important, but ideology is.

>>Your political bias requires ignoring this.

I can't say what makes you so exceedingly ignorant, but whatever it is, it's very effective.
 
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Read the Constitution. Congress, and the party in control of Congress, control both the amount of money appropriated for spending, and the amount of money borrowed or taxed to cover the spending - not the President. Clinton-42 agreed, after having his arm twisted almost completely off, to negotiate with the US House of Representatives (specifically Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich since the House is the chamber where revenue bills must originate) to lower spending and balance the budget. The problem, is that the GOP used to be the party of fiscal responsibility - they are no longer even close to fiscally responsible, and spend money just about as fast as Democrats. Not quite as fast, but damned near. With the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, we as a country have the best chance of lower spending, balancing the budget to stop deficit spending, and get the National Debt under control since the time that Gingrich and Clinton-42 agreed to work together, because Ryan is arguably the most capable and intelligent budget expert to grace the House in over 50 years.

Yeah.. we have a few of Ryans proposals. Looking over his proposal for social security and medicare.. based on those.. I don't think he is qualified to run a lemonade stand.
 
Ryan … his proposal for social security and medicare … I don't think he is qualified to run a lemonade stand.

I agree with yer narrow point, but in my view he's a skilled and effective enough legislator to react positively to the reality that there isn't a chance in hell of getting those ideas past Clinton45. The key, imo, is that he will likely not allow the teabugger Eff Up caucus to block reasonable compromises on at least some things, allowing for considerably more progress than we had 2011-15.
 
Look at your own data without thinking about who the President happened to be at any particular point in time. It tells a different story. If Obama had become President in 2005, the storyline of his presidency would be vastly different. In 2005 he'd have had no hope of preventing the housing bubble, and it would look as if the world was falling apart shortly after he took over the world's most powerful country. If Bob Dole had become president in '97 it would appear to a lot of fools that he was the most successful president ever, unless he was still President between '01 and '03 in which case it would have appeared that he destroyed the country.

If you stop convincing yourself that the President determines everything that happens in the world by virtue of his occupation of the Oval Office, you'll look at economic trends and think about policies, not figureheads. Tax policy, monetary policy, financial sector regulation, and so forth. To even attempt to frame the economic discussion of the US over the past 25-35 years in terms of who was President when inherently dumbs down the discussion of what is economically best for the country.

I think you underestimate the influence that presidents can have on spending policy. Look what Reagan did, for instance. Presidents generally set the agenda for their party, so if deregulation or SSE is the president's agenda, their party will try to make that happen. Depending on who controls Congress, it can't always get done, of course, but things certainly don't move in the opposite direction. Plus, you have wars, often the sole fault of the Executive, that influence things. Bush got more cooperation from Democrats because when we are at war, just about everybody falls in line.

That said, I don't think that Obama was that big on regulations. Many Democrats were very disappointed in some of the compromises he made, and some of the stuff that he simply failed to do. Clinton (both) certainly wasn't (aren't) pro-regulation. Bill was riding the wave of the Dotcom bubble, and he wasn't about to tinker with anything, even though he should have - as Greenspan later admitted. The push for more regulation didn't come until after the disaster of 2007, and even then, there were still a lot of politicians that wouldn't buy into it. Especially Republicans, who were dedicated to stonewalling anything the Dem president wanted to do.
 
Ridiculous thread. Of course there will be a large expansion of federal spending under Hillary. Same could be said for Trump. Vote Johnson!
 
Of course there will be a large expansion of federal spending under Hillary.

What's yer reason for saying that?

>>Ridiculous thread.

So don't post in it. I know I won't miss yer … input.

Look at it this way — when there is no big increase, you can claim it's only because Republicans in Congress were there to stop her and her fellow librul Demecrats.
 
Read the Constitution. Congress, and the party in control of Congress, control both the amount of money appropriated for spending, and the amount of money borrowed or taxed to cover the spending - not the President. Clinton-42 agreed, after having his arm twisted almost completely off, to negotiate with the US House of Representatives (specifically Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich since the House is the chamber where revenue bills must originate) to lower spending and balance the budget.

This is the myth conservatives believe. The truth is different. Democrats held the House and the Senate for the first two years of the Clinton presidency. By the time the GOP took control of the House and Senate in January, 2005, and passed budgets that took effect in FY2006, the trajectory of the deficit was already close to being eliminated. The GOP merely showed up to claim credit, but the matter was already decided.
BN-EX460_narrow_G_20141008143612.jpg


And then George W Bush happened.
 
What's yer reason for saying that?

>>Ridiculous thread.

So don't post in it. I know I won't miss yer … input.

Look at it this way — when there is no big increase, you can claim it's only because Republicans in Congress were there to stop her and her fellow librul Demecrats.

Sometimes I wonder what planet you live on or that maybe you live in an alternate universe. Hillary is already on record for wanting a large expansion in federal spending. Now you could argue that she wants to raise taxes quite a bit but spending is still spending and the experts have noticed that with all of her increased spending, even with her tax plan, she is still over two trillion dollars short of paying for the increased programs she wants. Trump's plan is actually worse but Hillary has still proposed large federal spending increases. Both are disgusting and that's one of the reasons why I'm voting for the more fiscally responsible Johnson.
 
Ridiculous thread. Of course there will be a large expansion of federal spending under Hillary. Same could be said for Trump. Vote Johnson!

The nation would greatly benefit from a federal (as well as state and local government) spending stimulus targeted on infrastructure. Lack of government spending is partially to blame for an economy that is growing, but comparatively slowly.

Austerity_2_WM_630.gif


Now's the time. The federal government can borrow at low interest rates: 10-year, inflation-protected bonds yielded just 0.09 percent on Friday. Unlike repeated claims that tax cuts for the rich will stimulate the economy, federal spending will ensure a bigger economy later, which would mean more tax revenue. This additional revenue would probably be larger than any rise in future interest payments.

Is our debt already to large? Not in comparison to our economy. Federal interest payments are only 1.3 percent of G.D.P., low by historical standards.

It's such a no-brainer that even The Donald has embraced the need for stimulus. The only ones standing in the way of this win-win for the country are House Republicans who are willing to sink the nation rather than see a Democratic president be successful.

Help the nation be successful. Vote Democratic across the board in November.

Disclosure: I adapted several sentences from this article by Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman.
 
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The nation would greatly benefit from a federal (as well as state and local government) spending stimulus targeted on infrastructure. Lack of government spending is partially to blame for an economy that is growing, but comparatively slowly.

Austerity_2_WM_630.gif


Now's the time. The federal government can borrow at low interest rates: 10-year, inflation-protected bonds yielded just 0.09 percent on Friday. Unlike repeated claims that tax cuts for the rich will stimulate the economy, federal spending will ensure a bigger economy later, which would mean more tax revenue. This additional revenue would probably be larger than any rise in future interest payments.

Is our debt already to large? Not in comparison to our economy. Federal interest payments are only 1.3 percent of G.D.P., low by historical standards.

It's such a no-brainer that even The Donald has embraced the policy. The only ones standing in the way of this win-win for the country are House Republicans who are willing to sink the nation rather than see a Democratic president be successful.

Help the nation be successful. Vote Democratic across the board in November.

Disclosure: I adapted several sentences from this article by Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman.

Mother Jones? Hilarious how you guys can come up with facts from such irreputable sources and then claim that they are not cherry picked.
 
Mother Jones? Hilarious how you guys can come up with facts from such irreputable sources and then claim that they are not cherry picked.

Are you saying that the graph, using data from the NBER and Fed Reserve of St. Louis is incorrect? Then please provide the "true" data.

Waiting...
 
This is the myth conservatives believe. The truth is different. Democrats held the House and the Senate for the first two years of the Clinton presidency. By the time the GOP took control of the House and Senate in January, 2005, and passed budgets that took effect in FY2006, the trajectory of the deficit was already close to being eliminated. The GOP merely showed up to claim credit, but the matter was already decided.
BN-EX460_narrow_G_20141008143612.jpg


And then George W Bush happened.

Sure - let the Democrats take all the credit. I don't really care, although you really need to look at the big picture of the trends shown in your nice chart, I don't think they say exactly what you think they say. However, be that as it may, all that really matters is that we get control of both deficit spending and simultaneously reduce the national debt. Two totally different things. If the Fed monetizes the debt and prints more money, gives the money to Congress to cover revenue shortfalls, and the sequester simultaneously forces both the Congress and the Administration to lower spending, then neither party can claim to have reduced the deficit, even though Obama and the GOP in Congress have been arguing with each other as to who gets the credit for lowering the deficit - they're both wrong.
 
Are you saying that the graph, using data from the NBER and Fed Reserve of St. Louis is incorrect? Then please provide the "true" data.

Waiting...

I can go to STLFED and make a chart that says pretty much whatever I want it to say, if I know what I want to portray as fact before I begin cherry picking my data points.

Edit: Here's the link - you make some charts, they're fun. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
 
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