Norbert Haupt

Here is a chart of the federal budget deficit or surplus from 1948 to 2011. Rather than showing years, though, I am showing presidents in office.

(click to enlarge)

This shows that through Nixon, things remained pretty balanced and flat. America was at its prime. The American Dream was in full bloom. America supplied the world with goods: cars, airplanes, weapons, food, steel, textiles, electronics, the list goes on.

Carter started running noticeable deficits.

Reagan ballooned those deficits. We started installing the national debt clocks on Times Square.

Bush 41 kept Reagan’s legacy up. He spent and spent. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait. We started a war.

Clinton comes along and reduces the deficit, year after year, and in his last few years produces a surplus, something our entire generation had never experienced. We took down the debt clocks, we started paying off debt. Things were roaring. Clinton had a very consistent record of economic success.

Along came Bush 43. He saw a surplus and it burned a hole in his pocket. Against the admonishings of his financial advisers, against common sense, Bush 43 wanted a tax cut. The middle class got some money back. I remember getting $800 or so. The rich got much richer. The surplus turned into the worst deficit in history in a matter of a couple of years. Then 9/11 came along, we invaded Afghanistan first, then Iraq, spending money we didn’t have. This was not sustainable. The economy nearly collapsed in 2008. The country’s economy disintegrated under Bush.

Obama came along and more than doubled the deficit of Bush 43 in 2008 ($641 billion) and ran a deficit of $1,549 billion – that’s a trillion and a half, and he kept that going for the next three years. Obama’s excuses are that he received an economy that was in the pits, hours from total collapse. That may have been true, but did we need to spend three years of trillion-dollar plus deficits?

I think not.

People often take credit away from Clinton, saying he had nothing to do with the economic growth during his 8 years, that it was all just a good time in the economy.

I think not.

Just look at the graph. Before Clinton, to the year, 12 years of growing deficits, more or less. Then exactly when Clinton comes things reverse. Then exactly when Bush comes, record deficits return.

I say that in the last 40 years, Clinton was the only guy who knew what he was doing.

Why can’t he run again? I’d have somebody to vote for.