Republicant Balance a Budget

The recent ruction between Democrats and Republicans in Congress over the war funding bill has compelled me to investigate the financial cost of a war that the Republicans mislead America into believing would not last long.

In ginning up support for this war the Republican jingoists characterized it variously as "[a] cake walk," Ken Adleman-former Reagan official who chaired the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict...," Gen. Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; "I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . weeks rather than months" Vice President Dick Cheney on Meet the Press.

Now that we have entered the fifth year of the war and the Republicans have been proven to be dead wrong about the length of the war many Americans wonder what the Republicans forecasted as the cost in dollars and cents for the war.

Bush administration economist Larry Lindsey placed a, what was thought at the time, high range between $100 and $200 billion but he was countered by Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget who put the figure at $60 billion.

What is the cost currently? One site, nationalpriorities.org has a running clock(see the link at the top left of the page) which shows the cost at $424 billion and rising fast. Wrong, again. It would appear that the Republicans were wrong on the cost as well as the length of the war.

Has the underestimation of the cost increased the budget deficits? Of course they have. Is this an aberration for the Republican Party, a one time straying from its self-professed and oft repeated slogan of being the party of fiscal responsibility, of fiscal conservatism?

To best gauge that, one need only look at the accumulated national debt and see which party controlled the White House when the debt was added. To do that you need only go to the U.S. government’s website Treasury Direct to view the Monthly Statements of Public Debt to see the total accumulated public debt at the end of any given month.

The actual URL is: www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/mspd.htm

Let’ start with the year 1981, the first year of Republican Ronald Reagan’s first term. At the start of the first day of his first year in office, January 1, 1981, the accumulated national debt of the U.S. stood at $930,210,000,000 (that’s billion with a “b”).

From the start of our nation over 225 years ago through 1980 we had accumulated about $930 billion dollars in debt. This is a period that included the building of a nation and a number of wars, large and small, which includes the American Revolution, the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, WWI-first called the Great War before we knew there would be more than one near world-destroying war, WWII which made WWI with battles like the six-day First Battle of the Marne with its casualties of 250,000 each for the French and Germans look like a cake walk, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Riding into office as the standard-bearer of the fiscally conservative Republican Party, Reagan following an economic theory based on, get this, the Laffer Curve proceeded to work the conservative fiscal magic on our outstanding debt by running it up. On December 31, 1988, by overspending by $1,754,182,000,000 the accumulated and outstanding national debt stood at $2,684,392,000,000 (that’s 2.6 Trillion, trillion with a “t”). In short, in the span of eight years this fiscal conservative, the lodestar of the Republican Party, its demigod, nearly tripled a debt that took slightly over 200 years to create! Not much to laugh about there.

Not to be outdone showing the true meaning of Republican fiscal conservatism, George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s vice-president, in his single four-year term nearly added as much to the debt as Reagan did in his eight years by overspending by a sum $1,492,707,000,000, again, that’s trillion with a “t”, pushing the accumulated national debt to $4,177,099,000,000.

Taken together, Reagan’s and Bush’s 12 years in office saw the more than quadrupling of a debt that took over 200 years to create! Nothing funny about the Laffer Curve to me.

Maybe it was the era. Bush was succeeded by a Democrat: Bill Clinton. He came into office after a fairly deep recession which saw the closing of hundreds of banks and saving and loans nation wide and the near meltdown of the banking system. Being a Democrat and facing a deep recession he must have outdone Reagan and Bush in terms of overspending. Nope!

After eight years in office had Clinton tripled it like Reagan, quadrupled it like the combined financial disaster of Reagan/Bush, or worse? Nope. The accumulated national debt stood at $5,776,091,000,000. Under Clinton it had increased by 27%, or $1,598,992,000,000, but the annual budget had gone from deficits to surpluses with forecasted surpluses for as far as the eye could see. The deficit trend had been broken, the country rescued from Republican fiscal conservatism.

Then came the selection of George W. Bush, another Republican. If you believed the lie of fiscal conservatism as practiced by the Republican Party you would see ever increasing surpluses throughout his years in office, continuing the trend at the end of the Clinton administration. Sadly, you’d be mistaken.

What has happened is a continuation and, worse yet, an increase in the pattern of Republican overspending. As of the end of April 2007, the accumulated national debt has grown to, hold on to you hats, $8,840,168,000,000 (again, that’s trillion with a”t”). Bush, in seeking to be the penultimate fiscal conservative and outdo Ronnie and daddy, has added 3,064,077,000,000 to the accumulated national debt. That’s nearly twice as much in six years as what Clinton added in eight and 75% of what Ronnie and daddy added in 12 years!

Of the $7.9 trillion added to the accumulated national debt in the 26 years from 1981, the Republicans have added $6.3 trillion or 80%!

The Republicans often tag the Democrats with the Tax and Spend label but they are far worse. They are the party of Borrow and Spend. They Borrow and Spend so that a select few in America can live like kings of old in the greatest nation in history but pass on a whopping bill to our children.

Along the rivers and in the ports of this country there is an old sea shanty that asked the question “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” It seems a new stanza answering the question should be inserted at the top: Call Him a Republican and Put Him in Charge of a Budget! Hence the inclusion in the definition of Republicant in my New Devil’s Dictionary of “can’t balance a budget.”