Excellent comparison of the Republican versus Democratic administrations and economic outcomes

[Dog Gone at Penigma]

I found this to be an excellent summation contrasting and comparing how Republican and Democratic governance has operated. There are some consistent trends in areas like deficits, job creation, etc.

I actually found myself at my computer standing up to give this author and site a standing ovation of one. I hope those who read it will join me in making that a broader round of applause for an excellent pulling together of resources and analysis.

This is an excerpt:

You will often hear critics say that Bush left office with a $454 billion deficit. That was the deficit at the end of 2008 (12/31/2008). Then what accounts for the period from the end of December until the President is sworn into office in late January? Any calculation that begins when President Obama took office or at the end of 2009 (because the President had been in office for a year), is just flat-out wrong.

Here’s how it works...the fiscal year is from October 1 through September 30th. So a President governs for his first 9 months under the budget of the preceding administration.

At the end of the Bush fiscal year, September 30, 2009, the deficit was $1,417,121.

Obama’s first fiscal year, September 30, 2010, the deficit was $1,294,090. The deficit went down!

Obama’s second fiscal year September 30, 2011, the deficit was $1,298,614.

Obama’s third fiscal year August 31, 2012 (latest available), the deficit was $1,164,373.


Unemployment Rates

Clearly Democratic Presidents create more jobs per year than Republican presidents. Unemployment rates are higher under Republicans....it’s just a fact.

Johnson 1966-1969 average unemployment rate of 3.7%.
Clinton 1994-2001 average unemployment rate of 4.9%.
Kennedy 1962-1965 average unemployment rate of 5.2%.
Nixon 1970-1977 average unemployment rate of 6.3%.
Bush 1990-1993 average unemployment rate of 6.7%.
Carter 1978-1981 average unemployment rate of 6.7%.
Reagan 1982-1989 average unemployment rate of 7.3%.


Note: In most cases I have not listed numbers and percentages for President Obama because agencies take so long to formulate the numbers, I found I was unable to verify any of the figures.

http://www.thepragmaticpundit.com/2012/05/democrats-v-republicans-debt-and.html

[freshwest]

1. K & R! Think how useful this would have been while the media helped the right to lie about it.

[bluerum]

2. Definitely missing some zeros on those deficit numbers.... but yeah. Makes sense.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

3. looking for that discussion on "democratic vs republic"

There's this old (from 2003) discussion which gets at the questions I have:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x636538

I noticed that Wikipedia's description of the American government has been edited to remove any description of democratic government. It has been my understanding that the country is a Republic, but governed democratically. I figure this is being altered to reflect the fact that Republicans today want to prevent any legitimacy for the voes of minorities. And since the pundits point out that we are soon to be a minority of whites vs all other races, this is the apparent plan for coping and preventing voting rights of the emerging majority.

I believe this needs a major push back by those who respect the traditions of a democratically elected government in the United States. Sure, A "Banana Republic" is what we've become, but it isn't what we were meant to be by the founders.

Task #1: How do we fix the Wikipedia entry?

[progree]

4. Some more comparisons

Job Creation of record of post-WWII Presidents With Completed Presidencies, Plus Kennedy, Average Annual % Increases :

(Sorted from best to worst by average annual percentage increase in jobs. Republicans in red, Democrats in blue. Notice that -- with the tiny exception (0.02% difference) of Nixon to Kennedy -- the worst Democrat has a better record than the best Republican). And actually, Kennedy did not have a chance to complete his term -- had he done so, and had he had the same job creation numbers in December 1963 through January 1965 as Johnson had (a 3.48%/year annualized rate of increase), he would have easily topped Nixon. [x I haven't bothered with the very small 2/1/13 revisions to 1990 and later (and possibly before 1990, have not checked carefully) -- very small that is until the Obama presidency which had considerable revisions, but Obama is not in this table yet. This table is in miscA.xlsm "Jobs" sheet]

[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color= ] Average Average [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color= ] number of Jobs at Annual [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color= ] Jobs start of Percentage[/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color= ] Created Term Increase [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color= ] President Per Month Millions In Jobs [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color= ] ========= ========= ======== ======= [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=blue] Johnson 196,500 57.3 4.12% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=blue] Carter 215,396 80.7 3.20% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=blue] Truman 93,570 41.4 2.71% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=blue] Clinton 236,875 109.7 2.59% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=red ] Nixon 137,030 69.4 2.37% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=blue] Kennedy 105,059 53.7 2.35% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=red ] Reagan 167,729 91.0 2.21% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=red ] Ford 71,483 78.6 1.09% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=red ] Eisenhower 36,854 50.1 0.88% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=red ] G.H. Bush 54,021 107.1 0.61% [/font]
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"][font color=red ] G.W. Bush 11,406 132.5 0.10% [/font]

The average annual % increase in jobs is a much fairer way to compare presidents than just the raw job creation figures in thousands because the latter is unfair to the earlier presidents who were working with much smaller labor forces to begin with. For example the number of job holders at the beginning of Truman's administration was only 38% as many as at the beginning of Clinton's administration, and 31% as many as at the beginning of G.W. Bush's administration. So Truman's pathetic-looking 93,570 jobs/month creation record turns out to be even better than Clinton's 236,875 jobs/month record when adjusted for the size of the labor force.

In raw thousands of jobs created, both Reagan and Nixon beat Truman. But when adjusted for the size of the labor force -- again, by looking at average annual percentage increases in jobs -- Truman beats them both.

Official sources of information for the above:

# Payroll Jobs: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001
# Monthly change of above: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
# . . Hint: to see both of the above two together on the same page, go to http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001 and click on the "More Formatting Options" link in the upper right and check the "Original Data Value" and the "1-Month Net Change" checkboxes and click the "Retrieve Data" button halfway down the page on the left

Obama's Record, so far and compared to Bush's:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/111622439#post1

Forbes Magazine: Democratic presidents beat Republican ones: Disposable income, GDP, profits, stock market, national debt,...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021593080

Corporate profits: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/10/24/the-best-presidents-for-the-economy.aspx

Also at the above fool.com link - Stock market performance, Average annual real GDP growth per capita, Inflation (average annual change in the Consumer Price Index), Change in unemployment rate during their presidencies,

[progree]

5. Interestingly, the CBO projected a FY 2009 deficit of $1.2T BEFORE Obama took office

Some righties telling you that Obama doubled the last Bush deficit, from less than 500 B$ to more than a trillion dollars?

They are trying to make you think that the last Bush year was Fiscal Year 2008. Actually, the last Bush budget (FY 2009) contained a projected deficit of $1.2 Trillion. Fiscal Year 2009 covers 10/1/08 - 9/30/09 -- the last 3 2/3 months of the Bush Administration plus the first 8 1/3 months of the Obama administration. The budget for FY 2009 was signed into law by Bush. It contained a projected $1.2 trillion deficit according to FactCheck.org:

Shortly before Obama assumed office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office {on January 7, 2009} projected that the deficit for fiscal year 2009 would be $1.2 trillion ( http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9957/MainText.3.1.shtml ). {Bush left office and Obama assumed office on January 20, 2009 at noon}

The fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, 2009, with the deficit at $1.4 trillion. But only some of that was Obama’s doing. We conducted an exhaustive study of the spending bills Obama signed for that year, and concluded that Obama can be fairly assigned responsibility for a maximum of $203 billion in additional spending for fiscal 2009. Others put the amount lower: Economist Daniel J. Mitchell of the libertarian CATO Institute — who once served on the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee — has put the figure at $140 billion.

More: http://factcheck.org/2012/09/romney-obama-court-moms-distort-facts/

EF-5. National Debt. Budget Deficits and Surpluses
http://www.democraticunderground.com/111622439#post5