Conventional wisdom, at least as reported in the corporate media, is that Republicans are thrifty with public money, and want a smaller government, while Democrats are tax and spend wastrels who pour public money into a bottomless pit of welfare spending, and favor a bigger government. This conventional wisdom is wrong, of course. It exists because of concerted campaigns of misinformation conducted by both parties. To get to the truth, it is necessary to compare the campaign rhetoric with what the parties have actually done when they were in power.

     We are all familiar with the campaign rhetoric. Republicans tend to talk about “cutting the fat out of government” and to complain about “tax and spend Democrats.” Democrats talk about the importance of the “social safety net” and the need to maintain governmental services at an adequate level. In both cases, they are pandering to their core constituencies with this rhetoric. If you want to know what policies they really favor, you need to look at their track records.

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     In the first place, both parties have passed budgets and implemented policies that have substantially and consistently increased the size and power of the federal government over time. In every fiscal year since 1962, with only one minor exception (1965), the size of the federal budget has increased. During that same period of time, the federal government has given itself more power to control more aspects of our lives than it previously had. These trends are consistent, regardless of which party occupies the White House, or which party controls the House and Senate. Democrats tend to favor giving the federal government more power to tax and regulate, while Republicans tend to give it more military and law enforcement power. Based upon their actual behavior, both parties want a larger and more powerful federal government, and they have been getting what they want.

     Second, in terms of living within the tax revenues which were available to them, the largest budget deficits have been created under Republican Presidents. A budget deficit is the difference between tax revenues collected and the money spent by the federal government in a single fiscal year. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the largest budget deficits have been run up by our current President, Republican George W. Bush (see the chart accompanying this article). His administration has not yet ended, but he has taken us from a budget surplus of $233 billion during his first year in office to a budget deficit of $412 billion at the end of fiscal year 2004, a difference of $645 billion. Second place goes to his father, Republican George H. W. Bush, who went from a budget deficit of $155 billion during his first year in office to a budget deficit of $290 billion during his last year in office, a difference of $135.1 billion. Third place goes to Republican Ronald Reagan, who went from a budget deficit of $74 billion in his first year in office to a budget deficit of $155 billion during his last year in office, a difference of $ 81 billion. By comparison, the Democratic President who has run up the largest deficit is Lyndon Johnson, who increased the budget deficit by “only” $18 billion during his term in office. The record holder for a budget surplus is Democrat Bill Clinton, who went from a budget deficit of $290 in his first year in office, to a budget surplus of $236 billion in his last year in office, a difference of $526 billion.

     Republicans typically try to spin these facts by saying that Congress controls the budget, and that, for most of these years, Congress was controlled by the Democrats. It is a weak argument, however, because Presidents propose budgets to Congress and, in almost every case, they give the President pretty much what he has asked for. Congress will make some minor adjustments at the margins, but the overall size of the budget is consistently in line with what the President has proposed. It is a rather obvious act of smoke and mirrors for the Republicans to try to blame the Democratic Congress because it gave Republican Presidents the budgets they asked for.

     The other smoke and mirrors strategy relied upon by the Republicans is to pass tax cuts, and claim that they are giving the money back to the people. Tax cuts today just result in even larger tax burdens in the future. This is because the money has been spent. Where there is a budget deficit, some of the money spent has been borrowed, and will need to be repaid with interest. To minimize the tax burden on the public, politicians should pay for current government operations out of current tax revenues, thereby avoiding burdening the public with future interest payments. Republicans wield the phrase “tax and spend” like a weapon, but it is a far more responsible practice than the alternative of “borrow and spend,” which is what the Republicans have been doing to us for years. The tax cuts that they like to boast about just defer the day of reckoning, increase the overall debt, and increase the overall interest payments and tax burdens over time.

     Neither party has shown itself to be very adept in cutting the fat out of government. Both parties are able and willing to cut or eliminate particular programs that they do not like. But they generally do not even try to cut fat out of the programs they favor. Consider the bloated Department of Defense budget, for example. Consistently, for many years now, the Department of Defense has been unable to pass an independent audit of its budget, because its financial record keeping is so poor. In 2002 and 2003, mainstream media reported that the Department of Defense was unable to account for over a trillion dollars in financial transactions. More recently, billions of dollars destined for Iraq have been reported missing or unaccounted for. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have taken effective steps to cut the fat out of the Department of Defense, or even to require it to account for its hundreds of billions of dollars of missing public money.

     The sad truth is that both parties favor a bigger and more powerful federal government, and neither party wants to cut the fat out of some of the most wasteful government programs, like the military. Both parties do want to scale back or eliminate certain types of programs. The Republicans want to scale back or eliminate Democratic sponsored programs like the social safety net, environmental protections, some health and safety regulations, and public broadcasting. The Democrats want to scale back or eliminate Republican sponsored programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative (star wars), federal spending on faith based programs, and some forms of corporate welfare. The conventional wisdom about spendthrift Republicans and wastrel Democrats is simply wrong. The truth is that both parties spend a lot, but Democratic presidents do a better job of keeping their spending commensurate with the amount of their revenues.