The deficit picture also brightened after tight-fisted Newt Gingrich and his allies captured
53 Democratic House seats and took the initiative on government spending. During two
years of all-Democratic rule (1993-94), the federal deficit averaged 3.35 percent of the
gross domestic product, but the subsequent six years (under GOP congressional
leadership) brought deficits averaging less than zero -- with surpluses from 1998 through
2001.
Some commentators suggest that these figures show that Washington works best when
different parties control White House and Congress, but the 2006 midterm victory for
Democrats during George W. Bush's presidency spelled economic calamity.
In W's first six years, with his GOP allies dominating Capitol Hill, Bush deficits averaged
1.91 percent of the GDP -- well below the 60-year postwar average. After House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., brought their free-
spending ways to House and Senate, deficits soared to a dangerous 4.74 percent over the
next two years -- and continued to skyrocket to a projected (and appalling) 10.27 percent
for the first two years of Obama.
The unemployment rate went from an average of 5.29 percent during Bush's first six
years (with Republican majorities) to 6.57 percent after the Dems came to power -- and
an excruciating 9.4 percent (average) during the first 18 months of Obama.
All this highlights the huge stakes in the upcoming congressional elections.
A change of power on Capitol Hill can influence the economic direction of the nation at
least as decisively as a shift of control in the White House. After all, it's the Congress, not
the president, that makes final decisions on spending and taxes.
In terms of current partisan battles, neither side counts as blameless or masterful. Within
10 years of winning congressional majorities, the Republicans eventually lost sight of
the party's traditional values of fiscal responsibility and spending restraint, contributing
to their electoral fiasco in 2006. But the resurgent Democrats quickly outdid their GOP
predecessors in terms of reckless expenditures while watching unemployment shoot up
dramatically.
In other words, those who insist that continued Democratic congressional control will
improve prospects for job creation and deficit reduction cling to a naive misinterpretation
of the past. They ought to examine the actual record of the past two decades and begin to
reconsider their assumptions.