First of all, Republicans arguing about the economic performance of their guys is always amusing, considering the overwhelming evidence that the economy does way better under Democrats than it does under Republicans. This of course would explain why deficits increase more under Republican presidents. Deficit increases are a function of how bad the economy is.
Which brings us to the current situation. Arguing over Obama's deficits at this early stage is nuts. I looked up a number that I like because it takes in everything in a single number: the Aggregate Weekly Hours Index. (source:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&s[1][id]=AWHI&s[1][transformation]=pc1)
The year over year percent change since Obama got into office, which is all of five months of data, is worse in every single month than it has been since 1975. Under any president it would simply not be possible
not to run a huge deficit when the economy is shrinking this fast.
Bush had no such excuse.
That's one.
Now onto the relative performance, where someone came to an interesting and surprising conclusion, which I had to verify for myself.
This index of hours worked, like any other economic number you could look up, does way better under Dems than under Reps. The median percent change is 2.23 in total, but 2.74 under Dems, while only 1.55 under Reps.
But
this article wonders how Republican get elected anyway, and points out the reason why: in election years the economy does far better under Republicans than under Democrats. This number confirms it: in election years, the percent change under Dems is 1.97, well below their normal performance, while under Reps it's an outstanding 2.9.
Somehow, the Republicans manage to goose the economy in election years to their advantage, the only exceptions to this that I saw in the data being Dubya's dad in '92 and Dubya himself last year, of course.
Republicans definitely play the political game better, but Democrats deliver better results.
As for this extraordinarily unscientific debate (look! the deficits under Obama are bad! Wotta freakin' surprise. In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning.) inspired by a statement that is simply a fact in horrendous times like these, it would be a lot fairer to look at these numbers at the start of the next election year than it is looking at them now. Given the unbelievably bad economy he inherited from the incompetent idiot who preceded him, and the fact that he folded in the costs of Iraq into the budget so that it would actually tell the truth, unlike the liar who preceded him, if he can get the numbers down to merely normally bad from astronomically bad by then, that will be a huge accomplishment.
