THE DEMOCRATS DID NOT CONTROL CONGRESS WHILE REAGANOMICS WAS BEING IMPOSED!

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-demodeficit.htm

Myth: Democrats in Congress created the deficit.

Fact: Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981 to 1987, and the White House from 1981 to 1993.

Summary:

The Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981 through 1987, a period when the largest budget deficits of the 80s were passed. With Reagan in the White House, the GOP controlled two of the three bodies required to pass a budget.

Argument

Many Republicans argue that Reagan's tax cuts did not cause the mushrooming deficits of the 1980s -- it was runaway government spending. And because Democrats controlled Congress for 40 years, they are to blame for overcharging the public's credit card.

This argument forgets one inconvenient fact: Republicans were in control of the Senate from January 1981 to January 1987. It's true that presidents must submit their budgets first to the House, and that House Democrats declared seven of Reagan's eight budgets "DOA" -- Dead on Arrival -- but the fact remains that the Senate is an equal player in the budget process. Both houses of Congress have committees for appropriations and aggregate spending. Both houses of Congress vote twice on the budget: once on the original version, and again after the conference committee hammers out a compromise version of the two competing bills.

With Reagan wielding the veto pen in the White House, any budget standoff between House Democrats and Senate Republicans would have been tipped in the Republicans' favor. In other words, the GOP controlled two of the three bodies required to pass a budget. Therefore, Republicans dominated the budget process, and they deserve a larger share of responsibility for whatever deficits were passed on their watch.

It should also be pointed out that Republicans passed the largest deficits of the 80s; when Democrats regained control of the Senate in 1987, they reduced the deficits in 88 and 89, as the following chart shows:

Federal Deficit (Nominal dollars, in millions)(1)

Year Deficit
---------------
1979 -$40,183
1980 -73,835
1981 -78,976 < Republicans win Senate
1982 -127,989
1983 -207,818
1984 -185,388
1985 -212,334
1986 -221,245
1987 -149,769 < Democrats retake Senate
1988 -155,187
1989 -152,481
1990 -221,384
1991 -269,521
1992 -290,403

The smaller deficits of 1987-89 were the result of falling spending. Part of these were defense cuts in the Gorbachev era and the waning of the Cold War. Part of them were cuts in social spending, because this was the peak of the business cycle and there is less need for welfare and social spending when unemployment is low. The 1986 Tax Reform Act cut tax rates but also closed loopholes, actions which canceled each other out. So these smaller deficits were not the result of tax cuts, but Democratic-controlled spending!

Finally, Reagan could have vetoed any budget he deemed unacceptable. He did not.

Thom,

Where did the stats on the debt Reagan and the others Presidents ran up come from? Not that I don't believe they are correct. I just want to be able to back them up when telling friends.

Thanks!

P.S. Ruby, you rock!

Thom,

By all means get David Whorowitz on your show ASAP. Your audience just adores him. We also need another dose of Carrie Ludicrous of the Independent Women's Forum and Urine Brooks of the Ayn Rand Center.

Last week, I objected to your claim that drug dealing in the black community was an expression of the entrepreneurial spirit among people who don't have a legal outlet for it. In that post, I said that you don't know much about the black community and I don't think you're particularly interested.

Now here's part of my argument supporting that statement:

Carrie Lukas, Yaron Brooks, David Horowitz are semi-regulars on your show. I would guess that any of them individually may, and just the 3 of them collectively, were probably on your show more than all the black guests you had on your show over the last 12 months. If that isn't the case, it's only because the candidacy and election of Barack Obama made you seek out opinions of blacks about the racists attacks Obama and/or the controversy over Jeremiah Wright.

Blacks make up around 12% of the population of this country and Hispanics make up around 15%. What percentage of the guests on your show are from these populations? We're almost at the end of the first quarter of 2009; how many African-American or Hispanic guests have you had on your show so far this year?

I do remember that one of the few African-American guests you had on your show was Michelle Bernard of the conservative Independent Women's Forum. Maybe Carrie Lukas wasn't available that day.

I've heard you use the term "white privilege" a few times on your show. You have a choice of what guests you have on your show. You have an abundance of white conservatives, but it seems "people of color need not apply". How do you define "white privilege"?

The analysis of mortgage payments at the end of the show is completely and utterly wrong. The payments on a level-payment, self-amortizing mortgage (what most of us have on our homes) consist of two parts, an interest component and a principal component. The interest component is by far the greatest part of the monthly payment at the beginning of the mortgage term because it consists of the entire amount of interest accrued that month on the outstanding principal amount. The outstanding principal shrinks gradually over the term of the mortgage, which means that the interest component of each month's payment also decreases as the principal is paid down. The bank is earning only the stated rate of interest each month, not, as Thom said, 80-90 percent.

One of the hallmarks of one kind of risky mortgage is what is called negative amortization. In such a loan, the monthly payment is based on a so-called teaser rate, which lasts only a short period of time, sometimes as little as the first month of the mortgage, but the payment only changes once a year. Once the interest rate increases, the required monthly payment is no longer sufficient to pay the interest on the loan as it accrues, so the unpaid interest is added to principal. As I used to tell people when I closed loans like that, "This means that, if you pay only the required payment each month, at the end of a year you will owe more than you do today." Such a loan only works in a rising market, and really doesn't make sense even then unless the borrower has the discipline and ability to pay more than the required payment each month.

A level-payment, self-amortizing loan could not be structured as Thom and the caller want. The payments could be set up to pay a set amount of principal each month (1/360 of the original loan amount for a 30-year mortgage), but interest would still have to be paid currently on the outstanding principal each month. To take a simple example, a $180,000 mortgage at six percent would start off with a payment of $1400, consisting of $500 principal and $900 interest, which would decrease each month by $2.50 (one month's interest on the $500 principal payment made the previous month). Most people could not afford this. By contrast, a level-payment, self-amortizing mortgage would have a monthly payment of $1079.19 for the same mortgage terms.

One additional quibble: the "mortgage holder" is the lender, not the borrower. The lender (a/k/a the mortgagee) holds the mortgage (literally, the dead promise) until the borrower (a/k/a the mortgagor) complies with its terms (i.e., fulfills his/her/its/their promise) by paying it off in full, at which time the lender discharges the mortgage.

"This is Ronald Reagan speaking to you from Hollywood. You know me as a motion picture actor but tonight I'm just a citizen pretty concerned about the national election next month and more than a little impatient with those promises the Republicans made before they got control of Congress a couple years ago.

I remember listening to the radio on election night in 1946. Joseph Martin, the Republican Speaker of the House, said very solemnly, and I quote, "We Republicans intend to work for a real increase in income for everybody by encouraging more production and lower prices without impairing wages or working conditions", unquote. Remember that promise: a real increase in income for everybody. But what actually happened?

The profits of corporations have doubled, while workers' wages have increased by only one-quarter. In other words, profits have gone up four times as much as wages, and the small increase workers did receive was more than eaten up by rising prices, which have also bored into their savings. For example, here is an Associate Press Dispatch I read the other day about Smith L. Carpenter, a craftsman in Union Springs, New York. It seems that Mr. Carpenter retired some years ago thinking he had enough money saved up that he could live out his last years without having to worry. But he didn’t figure on this Republican inflation, which ate up all of his savings, and so he's gone back to work. The reason this is news, is Mr. Carpenter is 91 years old.

Now, take as a contrast the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which reported a net profit of $210 million after taxes for the first half of 1948; an increase of 70% in one year. In other words, high prices have not been caused by higher wages, but by bigger and bigger profits.

The Republican promises sounded pretty good in 1946, but what has happened since then, since the 80th Congress took over? Prices have climbed to the highest level in history, although the death of the OPA was supposed to bring prices down through "the natural process of free competition". Labor has been handcuffed with the vicious Taft-Hartley law. Social Security benefits have been snatched away from almost a million workers by the Gearhart bill. Fair employment practices, which had worked so well during war time, have been abandoned. Veterans' pleas for low cost homes have been ignored, and many people are still living in made-over chicken coops and garages.

Tax-reduction bills have been passed to benefit the higher-income brackets alone. The average worker saved only $1.73 a week. In the false name of economy, millions of children have been deprived of milk once provided through the federal school lunch program. This was the payoff of the Republicans' promises. And this is why we must have new faces in the Congress of the United States: Democratic faces.

This is why we must not only elect President Truman, but also men like Mayor Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Minnesota. Mayor Humphrey at 37 is one of the ablest men in public life. He's running against Joe Ball, who was a member of the Senate Labor Committee, helped write the Taft-Hartley law. The Republicans don't want to lose Ball, and are spending a small fortune on his campaign. They've even sent [Thomas] Dewey and [Earl] Warren to Minneapolis to speak for him. President Truman knows the value of a man like Hubert Humphrey in the Senate, and he has been in Minneapolis too, campaigning against Joe Ball. Mayor Humphrey and Ball are the symbols of the political battle going on in America today. While Ball is a banner carrier for Wall Street, Mayor Humphrey is fighting for all the principles advocated by President Truman; for adequate low cost housing, for civil rights, for prices people can afford to pay, and for a labor movement freed of the Taft-Hartley law. I take great pride in presenting my friend from Minneapolis, Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, candidate for United States Senator."

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uJDhS4oUm0M
Reagan Campaigns for Truman in 1948.