Playing the Numbers Blame Game

These numbers were Obama's fault. These other numbers were Bush's fault. [Link]

It's not really very easy to look at these graphs and tell a story where the deficit is 1.6% under George Bush in 2007, and then suddenly balloons to 10% under Obama a few years later--and does so almost entirely as a result of policies initiated under George W. Bush, and only those initiated under George W. Bush. (Not because of say, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.) What changed about Bush policies that made them so much more expensive once Barack Obama took office?


Nor is it exactly obvious to look at the $2.4 trillion in additional debt incurred during Bush's eight-year presidency, and say that he is nonetheless actually responsible for $7 trillion of our current debt load--and then turn to the $3.1 trillion of debt incurred during Barack Obama's three-year presidency, and declare that his policies are actually responsible for only $1.4 trillion.


As Jim Fallows notes, these blame games are really quite childish. In fact, most of what's driving our current deficits is the economy, and the onrushing retirement of the Baby Boomers. Those are the things that are changing rapidly, not the size of the Bush tax cuts. If you want to blame it on anyone, blame Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, but good luck getting any money out of their estates.


My colleague nonetheless thinks that this is a useful graph because it focuses us on the choices that have to be made: "I really am not interested in the Bush-v-Obama, red-v-blue allocation of the blame. The point is the fundamental irrationality of insisting on cutting the deficit, while also insisting on preserving every penny of the tax cuts. One or the other: OK. Both of them: You're making it up."


I'm afraid I disagree. I also am not interested in the Bush-v-Obama, red-v-blue allocation of blame, but the graph at top was made by someone who seems very interested indeed in allocating as much blame as possible to Republicans--indeed, more interested in that than anything else. So it does not do a very good job of illustrating the relative size of choices--the Bush figures are eight-year figures, the Obama figures three-year figures. And it's entirely retrospective. Aside from the massaging I discussed above, the focus on the past makes it a very bad guide to the relative magnitude of the future choices we need to make. Some of these items (tax cuts, entitlements) will grow, and some of them (military spending, some discretionary items) won't. All this graph is good for is apportioning blame for the debt we've already incurred, and as I say, it's rather questionable whether it's even good for that.


Settling whether "Bush policies" or "Obama policies" were the "cause" of the deficit wouldn't tell us a damn thing about what we should do--unless you're the sort of person who thinks that the most important fact about a policy is who was president when that policy was enacted.

The existing situation is unsustainable. Spending always rises, regardless of which party in control.

A pox on all their (foreclosed) houses.