The reasons that I once became a Republican are many, mostly relating to the Dixiecrat (remember Lester Maddox and Herman Talmadge) flavor and corruption of the Democratic Party in the South up until recent decades. One positive reason for me to be a Republican was that the GOP was the home of the balanced budget, which I strongly support. But this is no longer the case with the GOP.
Running as a fiscally conservative Republican, I won an election and became Chairman of a rural Georgia County Commission. Under my leadership, we cut tax increases from 10% a year to 1%, while increasing services (side note: this was still not enough for the local Tea Partiers). We accomplished this feat by cutting obvious waste and increasing efficiency. It wasn’t easy or without conflict, but it was technically and politically doable. And, most cost reduction votes were 3-2 … with the Democrats voting no.
It should be noted that for much of this time, I generally avoided stating publicly that I am a social progressive although when asked I was up front about it. I also was clear and vocal about my liberal social and racial views in private conversations, including my severe criticism of some Commissioners and others for the use of the “n” word in private versus public discourse.
Along these lines, I did state repeatedly in County Commission meetings that racism had no place in our county and that locally we should have strict separation of church and state (the Barrow County/ACLU suit about the Ten Commandments display was going on at the time). I lost considerable right-wing support because of these issues and my failure to endorse the national party’s socially conservative platform.
Over the last few years, I have strongly condemned the racism, misogyny and divisiveness coming from our President. But, solely due to the fiscal aspects, I officially stayed a Republican until 2018. Traditionally, Democrats were spendthrifts and Republicans weren’t … until recently.
Over the past few decades, the GOP has just given up on deficits and a balanced budget. And, it has gotten much worse with them in control of the White House. Considering that the entire GOP constantly criticized Obama for deficits, the hypocrisy of the GOP leaders on this topic is remarkable.
In 2007-2008, the economy was sinking fast, moving us toward a second Great Depression. W and Obama understood this fact, and both were trying hard to reverse it. One proven way to stimulate the economy was to increase short term government expenditures. The philosophical idea behind this approach was to cut back funding when the economy improves and to increase taxes if needed to take care of any short-term debt created. But that never happened.
Specifically, the annual national deficit increased significantly under Obama’s early years, but went down considerably in his last term, as shown in this deficit chart (from usgovernmentspending.com):
Deficits in billions:
2008 – $458; 2009 – $1,413; 2010 – $1,294; 2011 – $1,295; 2012 – $1,087; 2013 – $679; 2014 – $485; 2015 – $438; 2016 – $585; 2017 – $665; 2018 – $779.
As is shown, the GOP led effort to pull out of the deficit began in 2008 when the GOP controlled Congress and W attempted to boost the economy via a stimulus package to take effect in 2009. The deficit went up a trillion dollars from 2008 to 2009. However, as the economy recovered, the deficit slowly went down under Obama to $438 in 2015, rising to $585 in his last year.
It then continued to go right back up in 2017 and 2018. According to projections, it will be $1,091 this year and $1,101 next year (i.e. over a trillion for only the second time in our history, the first being the 2009-2012 period). The clear reason for this dramatic increase is the Trump tax cut, along with increased military and domestic spending.
The sole reason for the Trump tax cut was political, not economic. Economists understand that during periods of a strong economy the deficit must be decreased, hopefully abolished, and some effort made to pay down on our national debt. However, because a strong economy was the only lasting positive accomplishment of his first term, Trump wanted to stimulate an already strong economy. He knows that his actions are the opposite of what is advocated for by mainstream economists who are correctly concerned about increasing the national debt.
Both parties have apparently gone along with Trump’s fantasy that the debt will take care of itself via growth, gleefully passing a two-year budget with increases for both military and domestic programs. Clearly, being irresponsible is the only thing that both parties agree on.
