Government Statistics Made Easy!

Another day, another liberal blogger making outrageous charges in a feeble attempt to score cheap political points...


 If you're interested in learning how to quickly (less than 5 minutes!) get to the bottom of government facts and figures, follow along with me. Learning how to do this is invaluable, especially when combating wild slurs from the left.

Unhinged Liberal:
"The biggest lie, which has put the Federal and State governments in the RED, is the lie that cutting taxes will spur growth and bring in more money to pay the bills.

We have had 30 years of experience with this promise, and the facts prove that theory to be false."

Of course, he's wrong.  You can go here and run the numbers yourself.  It is not a government site, but it uses publicly available government statistics from GPO Access.

Contrary to the unhinged liberal's claim, the data show that revenue did increase after the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush II tax cuts. The chart to the left is for the Reagan years and it shows the growth in constant 2005 dollars.  You can punch in the 2000-2010 timespan and you'll see continued revenue increases after the Bush tax cut as well.




The data plainly show that revenue increased after each tax cut, and GDP also kept climbing. So clearly, the culprit in all of this is the spending.

Unfortunately, government spending grew at an even greater rate than the revenue increase, resulting in the growth of the national debt.

Look at the chart during the Reagan 80's, and you'll see why liberals (and libertarians,and fiscal conservatives) criticize Reagan and the Democratic House.  They increased spending even more than revenue increased, adding to the public debt.  Clinton and a Republican congress eventually flatlined it around 1997, and even started it downward.  Bush II ramped it up even more, and Obama is on course to set new spending records.

A False Nexus
This is where the mischief comes in.  Liberals scream and point to the debt chart, ignoring the first chart showing the increase in revenue.  To them, this "proves" that tax cuts cause debt.  They have to leave out the fact that revenue increased and the economy grew in order to "prove" this.  That tax cuts caused the debt is patently and provably false.  Too much spending is what exploded the debt.

An Easy to Use Tool to Analyze Government Data

I highly recommend Christopher Chantrill's Government Spending site.   Look on the left sidebar and you will find links to the sister sites, US Government Debt, and US Government Revenue. 

You can use the interactive charts to zoom in on areas of interest.  All of his charts are powered by US Government data accessed at GPOAccess.Gov.  You can also download all the data yourself for your own analysis from that same site.

Chantrill's site makes this very easy to do.  If you click the little "Here" link below the charts, you can build your own interactive line chart that displays the data from year to year.  % of GDP is a good choice to display for government spending, since it shows you how big of a slice the federal government takes out of the economy.  I also like the "$ billion 2005" setting, which displays all data in constant 2005 numbers.  This is important since the dollar's value is constantly eroding and it allows us to compare the 1930's with the 1980's by basing all numbers in constant dollars.

Avoid Petty Partisan Spats and Focus on the Stats
I bring all of this to you because I am tired of arguing with people who just want to tear down republicans or score some cheap political point.  Engaging in these kinds of arguments is a descent into madness.  Stick to the facts, and you can at least make some headway towards understanding, if not for the lib you are arguing with, then at least for yourself.

Self Sufficiency

The GOP just took back the House of Representatives, and President Obama's Debt Commission has issued a preliminary report.  Serious talk of serious budget reform is breaking out all over, and progressives are panicking.


They say all the slash and burn is crazy talk...  Well, anyone who thinks we can continue down our current path of handing everything out to everyone is also crazy.  You can't raise taxes high enough to pay for it all, and there will come a day when the US government can no longer borrow more money.


The Wall Street Journal and  Bloomberg each have a good article on the debt panel recommendations.  As Alan Simpson says, they did indeed harpoon almost every whale.

Ethanol is Immoral.  Farm subsidies need to go.  Poor farmers with small plots of land don't qualify anyway; it's the corporate farms that get your tax money.  We also need to demand an end to the ethanol and flex fuel subsidies.  Government takes our money and starves people to feed cars, driving up the price of food in the process.  It's immoral.

I agree with cutting social security benefits, but that must be accompanied by a strong, stable dollar policy so our savings are not eaten up by inflation.  Additionally, interest and dividends should not be taxed.  If you want us to do for ourselves more in our old age, stop stealing our nest eggs by taxation and inflation.

I also agree with slashing government bureaucracy and programs, but that needs to be accompanied by lowering the bar to employment and new business creation.  A job is the key to self-sufficiency,but government regulation and taxation are chasing jobs overseas.

DoD Cannot Be Exempt

National defense is one of those rare government functions that is actually mentioned in the constitution.  Christopher Preble writes of a growing conservative rift over just what and how much our military should be doing overseas. An increasing cohort of conservatives argue that cutting back our overseas interventions and commitments will make our military stronger and the nation safer. 

Of course, cutting spending without a corresponding reduction in commitments is a recipe for overburdening service members taxed by too frequent deployments to far-flung places. But it is already obvious that most of what America spends on its military—often erroneously labeled "national defense"—really defends others who can and should defend themselves.

It's time for advocates of free markets and limited government to recognize that a vast military presence around the world is utterly inconsistent with those ideals. If we agree that government intervention domestically often has unintended, harmful consequences, we should recognize that the same principle holds true internationally, in spades.  (Christopher Preble - WSJ)

The budget battles and government downsizing skirmishes have barely gotten started, so strap it on troops!  We've just begun to fight.

The First Cut is the Deepest

Ezra Klein criticizes the GOP's Pledge for America as being short on details, and it is.  But it's meant to be a manifesto more than a line-by-line laundry list.  Also, with the Democrats floundering, the GOP sure doesn't want to give them anything to grab on to.

Detroit News concludes that, yeah, there's nothing new in their message:  It's a much-needed back to basics.

"Oh yeah?  Wacha gonna cut?  Huh?  Huh?"  Shout the screaming lefties.  Obama, like all good liberal demagogues, slyly suggests that they want to kill old people and starve children.  It's lefty propaganda, but there is a grain of truth.

No Easy Cuts 
There are no easy cuts, so those of us who want to shrink government need to do some thinking.

The Left Way:  The Center for American Progress, a progressive organization, has taken their stab at balancing the budget.  The document, A Thousand Cuts, seems designed more to scare people off of the small government path, but at least it is a serious and sincere effort.

The Right Way:  Paul Ryans Roadmap.   It's a thing of beauty, and it's been scored by the CBO.  As a bonus, the website is attractive and easy to navigate.  Most important, the roadmap is not the end of the discussion.  Ryan himself portrays it as a starting point for a national dialogue, and Americans are ready for such as discussion.   

You can also go read the Pledge to America...  If you can find it.  Google it and every hare-brained commentary on it will show up ahead of the GOP's official site.  Then, when you finally find it, it's a damned pdf document that's 10 bajillion gigabytes and takes forever to load.   The Republicans, God bless 'em, are so inept and rolling stuff like this out.

Crouching Democrats, Hidden Agenda

The craven, cowardly Democrats will not pass a budget resolution this year. 

With the midterm elections looming and primary results showing voters in a sour mood, Congress will probably forgo laying out tax-and-spending plan for the fifth time in the last 12 years.

Why?  Because they are chickenshits, and doing so would expose their progressive Chicago-style street hustle.  They've paid off a lot of friends these past few years, and they had to borrow from China what they couldn't take from you.  Free-market conservatism and allowing people to manage their own lives as our founders envisioned cost nothing.  Progressivism costs everything. 

The government is projected run $10 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years, with interest payments on the debt forecast to quadruple to more than $900 billion annually. Moody’s Investors Service has said it might eventually cut the government’s bond rating if the fiscal outlook doesn’t improve.

And still they promise us more.  Wasn't Obama care supposed to save money?

Chris Christie:  A Courageous Conservative

Chris Christie, newly-elected governor of New Jersey, shows us the way out of this fiscal hell:

Christie is tackling the nation’s worst state deficit — $10.7 billion of a $29.3 billion budget. In doing so, Christie has become the politician so many Americans crave, one willing to lose his job.

Upon taking office Christie declared a state of emergency, signing an executive order that froze spending, and then, in eight weeks, cutting $13 billion in spending. 
In March he presented to the Legislature his first budget, which cuts 9 percent of spending, including more than $800 million in education funding; seeks to privatize numerous government functions; projects 1,300 layoffs; and caps tax increases. 

Teachers unions are incensed...

Smoke 'em Out!
Now is the time for conservatives to press the attack.  Republicans need to hound these democratic weasels into facing up to the fiscal calamity their collectivism has created.  Time to flush them from their fetid lairs.  Chris Christie is leading the charge, and the cowardly Democrats are on the run.  We need to chase them.

A Deficit of Knowledge

Carrying debt is not bad if it remains a manageable percentage of your income

Think of your fixed 20 or 30 year mortgage.  It looks big and scary when you sign the papers, but as the years go by it shrinks in comparison to your (hopefully) rising income. 

But imagine if your debt were growing faster than your income.  At some point, total yearly spending will overtake your income, driving you to bankruptcy.

That is what is happening to the US:  Debt is Growing Faster than GDP
We've had debt since the 1800's.  It's ballooned in war time and gone down in flush times.  But over the past decades (yes, it is partially Bush's fault), it's been growing faster than our economy.

Are Liberals Economically Stupid, Purposefully Dishonest or Willfully Ignorant?
Surf over to ultra-lib Salon and you'll quickly see why most liberals are economically ignorant.  Michael Lind has written a extremely stupid article, even by liberal standards.  He starts with the standard Keynesian argument that you can't cut government spending during a recession, blithely unaware that there is no empirical data to back this up. 

He then poo poos those who compare the national budget to a household budget:

This folksy metaphor is repeated so often that its absurdity is rarely noticed. In reality, households and businesses do not balance their budgets every month, or even every year. Both households and businesses take out loans and pay them down over many years.

Do deficit hawks understand that real households and businesses do not follow the "pay-go" rules that they advocate for the government — on the supposed model of households and businesses? Are deficit hawks really deficit dodos?

Dishonesty:  The favorite liberal tool
This is bald-faced dishonesty.  Nobody is advocating "paygo" except blue dog democrats.    Americans are not protesting judicious borrowing; almost all households do it. Few of us have the money laying around to pay cash for a car or a house.  But we are alarmed by a federal debt that that is increasing much faster than GDP. 

Bottom Line:  Attacking deficit spending attacks threatens liberalism.  The heart of liberalism is bribing people with free stuff stolen from the taxpayer.  Take away the money and the liberal agenda collapses like the rotten edifice it is.

He then goes on to denigrate deficit hawks as "deficit dodos," continuing to rail against this fictitious conservative straw man he has created.  He is either extremely stupid or a crafty propagandist.  

For the antidote to this progressive plouffian poppycock, go read the short and informative article, What Every American Should Know About The National Debt.

There is no easy way out of this fiscal nightmare.  More food for thought:
The Budget's a Sham
The Debt Bomb