Sunday, February 14, 2010

Blaming Bush (When We Should)

To some extent, if we don’t like the Obama administrations fiscal policies, we should look at Bush – who partly laid the groundwork for the Democratic rise.

Paul Kedrosky of Infectious Greed did this, and shows that if the Bush administration and the Republican controlled Congress had held spending to 4% (a little tighter than inflation plus population growth – so approximately what a fiscal conservative would have done) Bush would have achieved Clinton-sized surpluses in 2006 and 2007, and the federal budget would have still been in surplus in 2008.

Nothing like a counterfactual to focus thinking.

No comments:

Post a Comment