The record of Ronald Reagan for increasing the US gross public debt is so bad in the post-war era it is a veritable outlier compared to everyone else.
It represents the price this country paid for hefty tax cuts at the same time defense spending was increased to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Conservatism as understood by Ronald Reagan was primarily anti-communist, not fiscal. This is more in keeping with the Democrat Party of the time which he abandoned as communist influence over it grew through the labor unions. Along with the rest of his record, it is arguable that Ronald Reagan out-liberaled the liberals in many respects, making the Republican Party the home of liberals while the Democrat Party got radicalized by the so-called progressives.
Maybe Mitt Romney had a good reason not to think of himself as a follower of Reagan back in the 1990s. This country could use a Republican in the mold of Eisenhower again to restore some credibility to the Republican Party from the fiscal side.
The 170 percent increase in the public debt metric over an 8 year period under Reagan makes his predecessor Jimmy Carter look almost moderate by comparison, who racked up a 40 percent increase in 4. And Bush The Younger was actually in the very mold of fiscally liberal Ronald Reagan, cutting Clinton's tax increases and increasing spending on The War On Terror as well as Drugs For Seniors. Bush The Younger's 99 percent increase in the debt over 8 years comes out to roughly 12.38 percent per year, but it must be remembered that some of Obama's emergency spending in early 2009 became part of Bush's fiscal record, which ended October 31, 2009, another price of electoral defeat. The winners write the history.
Harry Truman narrowly beats out his successor Dwight Eisenhower for being the king of fiscal rectitude, posting an 11 percent increase in the debt in 4 years with Ike logging 23 percent over 8 years.
The numbers on which I relied for the following come from usgovernmentdebt.us, but not for Barack Obama, for whom I relied on the very latest figures available from treasurydirect.gov, which regrettably go back only through 1993. The percentage average annual increase in the debt shown below is for illustration purposes only since the percentage increase in the debt is calculated from beginning of the fiscal period to the end, not for each individual year. Multiply by 4 or 8 to get the actual figure for the term of office (but shown values are rounded, and Obama's record will not be complete until October 31, 2013, over a year from now, in which case multiply by 3).
Reagan 21.25 percent
Bush The Younger 12.38 percent
Nixon/Ford 11.75 percent
Obama 11.64 percentBush The Elder 11.50 percent
Carter 10.00 percent
Clinton 4.50 percent
Kennedy/LBJ 4.38 percent
Eisenhower 2.88 percent
Truman 2.75 percent
Over time, Republican presidents have averaged a 12 percent annual increase in the debt while in office, while Democrat presidents have averaged almost 6 percent per annum.
Neither record is good, but things are not what they seem in the Republican Party, so-called home of the fiscal conservatives.
