Saturday, June 30, 2012

Except that time you stabbed me

'That', said Penelope to Javier.

Which is brought to mind by this claim by Berkeley's J. Bradford DeLong, former Deputy Asst. Treasury Secy;
I worked for the Clinton administration. Throughout the entire 8 years of the Clinton administration--without a single Republican vote to help us when the heavy lifting needed to be done--we reduced the share of federal government spending as a share of potential GDP from 22.2% to 19.3%--by 0.3625%/year.
Anyone remember the congressional elections of 1994?  Throughout the final six years of the Clinton Administration both legislative houses were in the hands of the Republicans.

Without Republican votes nothing could be accomplished back then.  Say, Welfare Reform in 1996.  Not to mention the shutdown of the federal government in late 1995 because Bill Clinton vetoed the Republican passed budget.

Clinton objected to that budget because it didn't spend enough money on programs such as Medicare, and moved the government toward a balanced budget by 2002 (too soon for DeLong's hero).

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