Myth: Democrats in Congress created the deficit.
Fact: Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981 to 1987, and the White House from
1981 to 1993.
Summary:
The Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981 through 1987, a
period when the largest budget deficits of the 80s were passed. With Reagan
in the White House, the GOP controlled two of the three bodies required to pass
a budget.
Argument
Many Republicans argue that Reagan's tax cuts did not cause the
mushrooming deficits of the 1980s -- it was runaway government spending.
And because Democrats controlled Congress for 40 years, they are to blame
for overcharging the public's credit card.
This argument forgets one inconvenient fact: Republicans were in control
of the Senate from January 1981 to January 1987. It's true that presidents
must submit their budgets first to the House, and that House Democrats
declared seven of Reagan's eight budgets "DOA" -- Dead on Arrival
-- but the fact remains that the Senate is an equal player in the budget
process. Both houses of Congress have committees for appropriations and
aggregate spending. Both houses of Congress vote twice on the budget: once
on the original version, and again after the conference committee hammers
out a compromise version of the two competing bills.
With Reagan wielding the veto pen in the White House, any budget standoff
between House Democrats and Senate Republicans would have been tipped in
the Republicans' favor. In other words, the GOP controlled two of the three bodies required
to pass a budget. Therefore, Republicans dominated the budget process,
and they deserve a larger share of responsibility for whatever deficits
were passed on their watch.
It should also be pointed out that Republicans passed the largest deficits
of the 80s; when Democrats regained control of the Senate in 1987, they
reduced the deficits in 88 and 89, as the following chart shows:
Federal Deficit (Nominal dollars, in millions)(1) Year Deficit --------------- 1979 -$40,183 1980 -73,835 1981 -78,976 < Republicans win Senate 1982 -127,989 1983 -207,818 1984 -185,388 1985 -212,334 1986 -221,245 1987 -149,769 < Democrats retake Senate 1988 -155,187 1989 -152,481 1990 -221,384 1991 -269,521 1992 -290,403
The smaller deficits of 1987-89 were the result of falling spending.
Part of these were defense cuts in the Gorbachev era and the waning
of the Cold War. Part of them were cuts in social spending, because this
was the peak of the business cycle and there is less need for welfare and
social spending when unemployment is low. The 1986 Tax Reform Act cut tax rates
but also closed loopholes, actions which canceled each other out. So these smaller
deficits were not the result of tax cuts, but Democratic-controlled spending!
Finally, Reagan could have vetoed any budget he deemed unacceptable.
He did not.
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Endnotes:
1. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables,
annual.