It would be interesting to know which party did better in those areas government is supposed to be involved in - maybe one one-hundredth of the total budget - and which one kept dragging in more justifications to expand government. Unfortunately, there may not be much difference, although the expansions may be in different areas.

Beyond the arbitrary 1 year lag time used for cause and effect, the extremely small sample sizes make it impossible to even begin to remove the effects of random events. In other words, it is a complete waste of time, beyond providing the innumerate something to argue about. In other words, it is typical blogospheric fodder.

It's interesting that Mr. Kinsley seems to think that economic policy has immediate effect or one year lag at most.

Tax changes for example. I guess it depends on the specific change. A one year rebate on Social Security taxation is obviously - one year. But what are the economic effects of a permanent cut in rates or an accelerated depreciation allowance. I suspect you won't capture the bulk of the effects without a 5 year lag or more.

Another little number was the S&L debacle. This brewed up during the hyperinflation days of Jimmy Carter (and Gerald Ford/Richard Nixon, a little). But Reagan and Bush pere get the credit for the crisis under Mr. Kinsley's theory.

Moreover, Bush pere cleaned up the S&L mess (with a little credit to Reagan). But Bill Clinton gets the credit for the cleanup because the improvement happened on his watch. Convenient given Mr. Kinsley's predjudices.

A 5 or 6 year lag would make more sense in these cases, with Bush pere getting credit for a lot of the 'Clintonian' growth.

Many problems with the methodology.

1) Inflation, at least since Paul Volker, the fed has had the single biggest impact on inflation. POTUS and Congress have simply pulled the lever for the guy in charge. If he wants to use that as a stat, then he should look at who was president and who controlled the Senate when Volker and Greenspan were up for their confirmation.

Moreover, Reagan gets the "blame" (as does the Dem Congress) for all the bad economic results that occured from Volker's ringing out of inflation, a bureaucratic act that is as important as any others of the last 3 decades. He singlehandely caused the 83 recession, but in doing so made the economy and monetary policy far better. I guess Carter would get credit for appointing him and Reagan gets credit for appointing Greenspan.

2) Notice the entire 1930s are left out of the jobs and GDP figures? This is probably due to a lack of records, but it sure changes the numbers a bit don't you think?

3) The very idea that POTUS or congress get credit for the Growth, Inflation and jobs is pretty insulting and reminds us that Kinsley, as smart as he is, still is crippled by liberal base assumptions.

4) And for many of these numbers, life does begin in 1981 (or 1983 really) when Reagan's policies really took full effect. The change of the tax code is the single biggest economic policy of the time period discussed and has a huge impact over economic growth. Without going into to much detail, a dollar spent by the private sector has a far greater impact on the health of the economy than one spent by the public (e.g. government) sector. Lower tax rates changed the economic equation dramatically and more or less permanently. THe tax code changes since Reagan's initial rewrite have been small relative to the changes from Carter to Regan. In the grand scheme of things Bush 1's tax raise, Clinton's raises and cuts, and Bush 2's cuts haven't dramatically changed the over tax rate near to the effect that Reagan did. This has a compounding effect over the economy and Reagan and Co deserve a lot of credit for unprecendented 20+ year run that we are on. The two recessions we experienced were mild and shortlived. That's all due to our ability to spend our way out of recessions.

Kinsley's model dismisses this.

One more thing. His view of "holding down taxes" is a big slite of hand. Democrats he says are better at this. The problem is that his measure of holding down taxes is Federal Government Receipts. He conviently avoids talk of tax rates. But he surely knows total tax receipts are a function of GDP, or specifically the GDP of the richest 20%. So, if federal receipts are not increasing as dramatically under Democrats, it may mean the economy isn't growing as much under them (or rather the rich aren't producing as much). I haven't looked at the chart to see if this is true, but its important to note.

He surely knows that one of the Republican arguments for tax cuts is the supply-side effect it will have. They have always argued that lower taxes INCREASES tax revenue (due to a larger tax base benefitting from a healthy economy). So, if tax receipts are going up, Republicans see that a feature, not a bug, at least the supply-siders see it this way.

So, his use of total tax reciepts as a gauge of "taxes" is total BS.

The only numbers in his chart that really matter in grading Congress and the president are the number of government employees and the spending number, since that is the side of the federal ledger Congress and the Prez have actual control over (for tax receipts they can only peg a tax rate and hope the economy produces the budgeted number predicted).

Everything else is a by product of the PRIVATE economy and the government has a relatively small amount of influence over it, and when it does influence it its almost all negative.

Kinsley's chart is a great example of a phrase I'm sure he's used once or twice. There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statitics.

Wonder who would be ahead on turning firehoses and dogs loose against civil rights marchers?

Sheriff Bull Connor R-Al.
Governor Lester Maddox R-GA
Governor George Wallace R-Al
Senator Theodore Bilbo R-MI

Don S

I think you had trouble differentiating between the R and D keys on the keyboard.

It might be an honest mistake as they are close together.

Regardless of whether Kinsey's numbers really are indicitive of what he claims, there is no doubt that Bush and the Republican congressional leadership have given the lie to the conservative philosophy of governmental restraint.

For example, instead of abolishing the useless department of education, Bush did the opposite, pushing a major federal imposition on local governments.

And don't bring up the absurd drug benefit, which is already spiralling out of control and its barely started!

It disgusts me.

Not sure where you got your information from, Don S. -- all four of the gentlemen you named were elected as Democrats. He might have been associated with the "right" when he ran for president on the AIP ticket, but he won four governor's races in Alabama running as a Democrat.

by "he" I mean George Wallace, obviously.

Don, I honestly have no idea what part of the S&L crisis was set into motion in the 1970's (maybe the foundations for future 1980's abuse?), but it seems over simplified to blame Carter for it. As I recall, the gross abuses of the S&L's that lead to their downfall took place in the 1980's. (And had some prominent GOP names in the mix, e.g., Neil Bush, I think.). Rich and connected people playing financial shell games is what I understood it to be. (And rich and connected brings to mind a lot of parties and politcians other than Jimmy Carter).

yep, some quick google searching (wikipedia) indicates that Carter inititiated some scope expansion and deregulation, but Reagan greatly accelerated the S&L dereg. In a 1988 analysis, "insider fraud" was concluded to have been the primary problem. (Hmmm, insiders abusing a newly deregulated industry...some elements in common with Enron I guess). Like Kinsley said, some people want to blame Reagan for all that's good economically and Carter for all that's bad. The biggest conclusion from Kinsley's numbers I saw is that it is nearly impossible to honestly argue one party is any better than the other.

Robert,

You're a little low. Of course what the Fed gov't is "supposed" to be involved in is a matter of debate, but here are a few rough numbers to consider: Dept. of Defense, 16%; Iraq war, ~4%; debt interest (arguably mostly from 1980's deficits), 12%; Homeland Security, 1.2%; Dept. of Transportation (providing infrastructure for commerce is a legit gov service), 0.5%, etc. It is pretty easy to show at least 30 to 40% of spending falls under a pretty libertarian view of what they are "supposed" to do.

CM --

Don S., who I lambasted earlier for managing to get the party affiliations of all four "Republicans" wrong, is 100% correct about the S&L crisis being born in the inflationary 70s.

In 1980, the net worth of the entire S&L industry in the US was something like negative $100 billion -- this was before the scandals, before the Keating Five, all that stuff. 1980. So what happened to cause the S&Ls to become so unprofitable in the late 70s? Anyone? Bueller?

The problem with the S&Ls, to use a needlessly technical term, was duration gap and interest rate risk. Their liabilities (deposits) were short term / variable rate, but their assets (loans) were long-term, fixed rate (eg 30 year fixed rate mortgages.) When the inflation of the 70s drove nominal yields higher and higher, their interest expense rose, their interest income stagnated, and the industry became colossally unprofitable.

Congress could / should have let the whole industry go under at that point, but instead they decided to let them hang around, allowed them to take some risks in commercial real estate to get back on their feet and the like, which eventually led to an even more spectacular failure in the late '80s and FIRREA (the act of Congress that authorized the S&L bailout.) But the industry's woes certainly dated back to the 70s.

I thought I had put this one to bed last June.