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Using absolute $$ of deficits or anything other than percentages of increase of debt to concurrent period's GDP is nonsensical and is a case of Denominator Blindness Effect (aka ratio bias).
For example, in www.us-debt-clock.com - U.S. National Debt by President, from 1897 **:
Using $$ will obviously heavily skew the highest numbers to recent years, due to cumulative inflation... but highest %%, by far, was by FDR in 1930s Great Depression.
** Presidents share fiscal authority with Congress, and totals are affected by inherited budgets, recessions, wars, emergencies, tax policy, and interest costs.
#53 | Posted by Danforth at 2026-09-30 05:32 PM
Tell us: what happened to that surplus?
1. Ah, the "good old days" of gov't shutdowns and CRs... When Clinton lost Congress in 1994, he proclaimed "The era of big government is over!", then vetoed the "spending cuts + lower tax rates" balanced budget in 1995. The consequent CRs severely cut down spending (to 1.3% of GDP in 1996 and 0.3% in 1997)...
2. ... as we entered the era of "irrational exuberance" (Fed Chair Alan Greenspan in 1996) leading up to Internet Bubble and much higher government revenues from capital gains.
3. Finally, in 1997, Clinton-Gingrich-Lott budget deal cut both tax rates and spending, for $204B net spending cuts, including $77B from defense and $61B nondefense discretionary savings due to "peace dividend" :
(budgetcounsel.com (page 5) - Bipartisan Budget Agreement May 15, 1997 - PDF)
Nominal budget surpluses "under Clinton+GOP Congress" (real debt was still increasing, due to SS borrowing and off-budget items) started immediately, in fiscal 1998 and continued into fiscal 2001, when the US had to start dealing with the aftermath of both 2000 horrible burst bubble recession and 9/11.
BTW, after deficit rising to 1.4%, 3.3%, 3.4% of GDP in fiscal 2002-2004 (9/11 + Afghanistan + Iraq wars) it dropped to 2.4%, 1.8%, 1.1% in 2005-2007, and only rose to 3.1% in 2008 and 9.8% in 2009 as a result of GFC's market meltdown / tax revenues collapse and necessary Ben Bernanke'a liquidity injection plan (TARP), including $750B+ TARP loans, which were paid back to Treasury (with interest) by the banks "under Obama", so he was credited with that "revenue."
Obama, similar to Clinton, acknowledged "shellacking" after 2010 elections, when his 2010-2011 budgets failed to cut the deficits, but eventually agreed to spending and tax rates cuts, in 2012.
Obama's (and GOP Congress from fiscal 2012) deficits in fiscal 2010-2017:
8.6%, (GFC) 8.3%, 6.6%, 4.0%, 2.8%, 2.4%, 3.1%, 3.4% (8yrs = 39.2% of GDP)
Bush-43 deficits in fiscal 2002-2009:
1.4%(bubble burst + 9/11), 3.3%, 3.4%, 2.4%, 1.8%, 1.1%, 3.1%, 9.8%/GFC (8yrs = 26.3% of GDP)
These are truly comparable numbers.
In 1964 LBJ signed into law so-called "Kennedy-Johnson" Tax Reduction Act, the largest tax cut in U.S. history until 1981 - to stimulate the sluggish economy ("taxes... drag on economy, private sector") - yet in fiscal 1965 and 1966 tax revenues increased.
www.cambridge.org - The Kennedy " Johnson Tax Cut of 1964, the Defeat of Keynes, and Comprehensive Tax Reform in the United States.
www.coolidgereview.com - JFK Tax Cut ***
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Supporters say the strategy is crafted to avoid clashing with the Citizens United v. FEC ruling, which held that corporate election spending is protected by the First Amendment.
Citizens United is usually one of the things that Dems, for some reason, keep blaming when they lose general or an issue elections, just as "media" and "SOROS!!" and some other predictable things the Reps blame on their losses - because it's easier than examining, let alone admitting, the actual reasons for bad elections results.
With or without CU, "money = free political speech" has been the fact of political life before, and even more so in the digital information age, which slightly predates the CU decision in 2010.
The days of knocking on doors for GOTV, that mostly benefited the unions, have been going away in most (at least, non-rural) locales - you can't stop people from becoming "influencers" and "sharing" their opinions on ex-Twitter, YT, TT, and multitude of blogs and boards, from which the information (and misinformation) flows.
In fact, misinformation/disinformation campaigns by the bad actors, like Russia (Operation Overload aka Matryoshka / Storm-1679, Storm-1516 etc.), Qatar, Iran, would be a lot more difficult to counter without CU, as those expenditures are not bound by any laws.
www.wired.com - A Pro-Russia Disinformation Campaign Is Using Free AI Tools to Fuel a 'Content Explosion' -
Consumer-grade AI tools have supercharged Russian-aligned disinformation as pictures, videos, QR codes, and fake websites have proliferated. - 2025-07-01
www.sgdsn.gouv.fr - Matryoshka - Operation Overload - Storm-1679 - A pro-Russian campaign targeting media and fact-checking community
In the last several elections (2026, 2024, 2020, 2016) the side with the substantial money advantage lost or didn't do as well as could be explained by the dollars spent - the decisive factors were the [exceptionally poor] quality of the candidates (Hillary Clinton, Biden-2020/2024, Harris-2024) and their campaigns.
Harris had $1B, the expenditure of which still seems unexplained, even after a 1-year "post-mortem", Trump and RNC had $500+M in the bank while DNC was broke, Musk spent $500M or so on several campaigns, including TX... and the results of that were dismal.
So the excess of money isn't at all the guarantor of victory... in fact, most of this money is poorly spent - watching 300 stupid commercials in the course of campaign (as opposed to 200, 100?) doesn't usually change people's opinion when they usually make one after a few early "infomercials" or actually read about candidate and props in more details, or discuss them on boards.
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