[ed. As Joe Biden assumes the Office of the Presidency in a couple days he's already revealed plans for a $1.9 trillion economic recovery plan (the details of which can be viewed here). Included in that budget are provisions for an immediate $1400 stimulus check to help ease the burden of the pandemic's disastrous effect on the economy. Some are asking why $1400 instead of the $2000 that was promised? Well, for one thing, Democrats weren't clear to begin with and are simply adding $1400 to the $600 that Congress approved in the Covid-relief bill last month. This I think is a mistake. If you promise a $2000 check, you should deliver a $2000 check (not some "oh, well you know this is what we really meant... blah, blah, blah). But secondarily it also shows how conditioned Democrats are to being cowed by that tired, old Republican bogeyman of being "tax and spend" liberals. So, to help nip that nonsense in the bud, please refer to the following, provided by Politifact. It's pretty obvious. Republicans are the tax and spend party (cutting taxes for corporations and the rich, spending like crazy); Democrats clean up their messes.]
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A viral post portrays Democrats, not Republicans, as the party of fiscal responsibility, with numbers about the deficit under recent presidents to make the case.Alex Cole, a political news editor at the website Newsitics, published the tweet July 23. Within a few hours, several Facebook users posted screenshots of the tweet, which claims that Republican presidents have been more responsible for contributing to the deficit over the past four decades.
Those posts racked up several hundred likes and shares. We also found a screenshot on Reddit, where it has been upvoted more than 53,000 times.
"Morons: ‘Democrats cause deficits,’" the original tweet reads. (...)
At PolitiFact, we’ve reported extensively on how Republicans and Democrats often try to pin the federal deficit on each other — muddying the facts in the process. So we wanted to see if this Facebook post is true.
We reached out to Newsitics, the media outlet that Cole founded and works for, to see what evidence he used to compose the tweet and didn’t hear back. Our review shows the numbers basically check out, but they don’t tell the full story.
We reached out to Newsitics, the media outlet that Cole founded and works for, to see what evidence he used to compose the tweet and didn’t hear back. Our review shows the numbers basically check out, but they don’t tell the full story.
What even is the deficit?
Some people confuse the federal deficit with the debt — but they’re two separate concepts.
The Department of the Treasury explains it like this: The deficit is the difference between the money that the government makes and the money it spends. If the government spends more than it collects in revenues, then it’s running a deficit.
The federal debt is the running total of the accumulated deficits.
Following the money
Now let’s take a closer look at each president’s impact on the federal deficit.
To check the numbers in Cole’s tweet, we went to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which has an interactive database for these kinds of figures. Here’s what we found for each claim:
"(President Ronald) Reagan took the deficit from 70 billion to 175 billion." This is more or less accurate. The federal deficit went from about $78.9 billion at the beginning of Reagan’s presidency to $152.6 billion at the end of it. At points between 1983 and 1986, the deficit was actually more than $175 billion.
"(George H.W.) Bush 41 took it to 300 billion." Close, but not exactly. The number was around $255 billion at the end of Bush’s term. The deficit spiked at around $290.3 billion the year before he left office.
"(Bill) Clinton got it to zero." This is true. During his presidency, Clinton managed to zero out the deficit and end his term with a $128.2 billion surplus.
"(George W.) Bush 43 took it from 0 to 1.2 trillion." This is in the ballpark. Ignoring the fact that he actually started his presidency with a surplus, Bush left office in 2009 with a federal deficit of roughly $1.41 trillion.
"(Barack) Obama halved it to 600 billion." This is essentially accurate. Obama left the presidency with a deficit of approximately $584.6 billion, which is more than halving $1.41 trillion. The deficit was even lower in 2015 at around $441.9 billion.
We had to look for more recent data to back up Cole’s allegation that "Trump’s got it back to a trillion."
A Treasury Department statement from June put the federal deficit at about $747.1 billion so far this fiscal year. But the agency also reported that Washington is on track to post a $1.1 trillion deficit by the end of September, which backs up Cole’s claim.
A Treasury Department statement from June put the federal deficit at about $747.1 billion so far this fiscal year. But the agency also reported that Washington is on track to post a $1.1 trillion deficit by the end of September, which backs up Cole’s claim.
