Why are Democrats better fiscal conservatives than Republicans?

Question

The most basic & core principle of traditional Republicans is fiscal conservatism, yet Democrats have almost always been better at it than Republicans. Here is a general definition of the term:

"Fiscal conservatism is a political phrase term used in North America to describe advocacy of lower governmental spending practices and a lower federal debt; it may also include higher taxes in order to lower the debt."

However, when you examine the facts, Republicans have virtually never succeeded at it as well as Democrats have.

*Reagan nearly tripled the National Debt, and in fact, put the country into more debt than all of the previous presidents before him combined.

*Bush Senior added 1.6 trillion more to it

*George W. Bush has also nearly tripled the national debt yet again, and added roughly 5 trillion more to it.

In simple terms, for every $1 Democrat presidents have raised the national debt by in the past 59 years, Republican presidents have raised it by $2.99 in comparison.

Answer 1

Actually Democrats are worst. Republicans have to usually clean up after democrats make the mess. Reagan had Carter to clean up after. And in each case you cite, the economy was in better shape under a Republican  than a Democrat.

Think about what the debt was in ww2 when you think about the current president. How much does it cost to fight a war? Specially one we didn't start.

Answer 2

No, as was mentioned before, Republicans are famous for contributing to the National Debt more than Democrats, and the reason Republicans are the worst of the two is simple and well-documented - they are huge pork project spenders and often lead us into unnecessary wars, all while cutting taxes at the same time, which naturally leads to massive debt. To top this off, the economy has virtually always been better under Democrats than under Republicans.

The recent Bush administration is the perfect example of this. While controlling all 3 branches of Government, they ran up the debt 3 times higher than it was previously, and higher than any other time in history. The more branches of Government that Republicans control, the more the National Debt rises, and the worse the economy gets.

The current US debt is 9.4 trillion dollars - money we owe interest on, by the way - financed from a variety of sources, including huge sums from Asian Countries.

Answer 3

Different circumstances call for different amounts of spending.  We have a war now which is expensive and so had Reagan and the first Bush.  Otherwise I don't think the generalization holds true.  I wonder how much pork-barrel spending democrats in congress propose compared to Republicans.

Answer 4

A lot of it is the result of the horrendous condition that Democrat Presidents have left our military in.  By the time Jimmy Carter left office, it took a 22% pay increase to get our military personnel pay back to within 10% of the civilian counterparts.  The same for spending on equipment.

Under Bill Clinton, our military was once again trashed.  Bill's first defense budget introduced a provision to modify the formula used to calculate military pay raises so that all future raise would be 1% lower.  Luckily, even the devious Democrats wouldn't support that move.

Finally, a lot of the Republican Presidents have had to take over horrible economics.  Couple that to 9/11 and the increased terrorist threat, and some of the reason is obviousl.

Did you know that under Bill Clinton, the debt did grow.  Just like under every other administration, Congress "invested" our social security surplus in government securities.  That is why the Bill Clinton budget surplus had very little to do with any policy of his.  The Congressional Budget Office projected the surplus back in 1990, based on the fact that it would be the biggest social security surpluses.  Since the surplus was spent to mask the deficit in general revenue, there is in fact a huge portion of the "total" federal debt attributible to our Democrat Presidents as well.

Answer 5

I think the issue is that the Democrats raise taxes on individuals to keep their spending habits going, while Republicans just add more $$$ to the government credit card to keep their spending habits going.

The worst thing about it, is that with the Republican plan, Americans will pay a lot more in the long run because of all the interest generated.

Answer 6

The Democrats would probably be better fiscal conservatives than the current administration. The Democrats would spend a lot but also raise taxes to support that spending, whereas the Bush administration has spent a lot of money through borrowing. I don't know how the Dems would compare to other Republicans.