> Maybe we should vote for people who are financially literate, can think long term, and can "conserve" rather than politicians who promise endlessly?

Conservatives:

    +-------------------------+----------------------------------------+
    | President Name          | Deficit Increase (+) or Decrease (-)   |
    +-------------------------+----------------------------------------+
    | Donald Trump (2nd term) |                                    N/A |
    | Donald Trump (1st term) |                                 +11.1% |
    | George W. Bush          |                                  +4.3% |
    | George H. W. Bush       |                                  +1.8% |
    | Ronald Reagan           |                                  +0.5% |
    | Gerald Ford             |                                  +0.8% |
    | Richard Nixon           |                                  +0.7% |
    | Dwight D. Eisenhower    |                                  -1.8% |
    +-------------------------+----------------------------------------+

Liberals:

    +-------------------------+----------------------------------------+
    | President Name          | Deficit Increase (+) or Decrease (-)   |
    +-------------------------+----------------------------------------+
    | Joe Biden               |                                  -5.7% |
    | Barack Obama            |                                  -6.7% |
    | Bill Clinton            |                                  -6.1% |
    | Jimmy Carter            |                                  -0.1% |
    | Lyndon B. Johnson       |                                  +1.9% |
    +-------------------------+----------------------------------------+

Deficit rate = (federal outlays - federal receipts) / GDP. Change = deficit rate in final fiscal year - deficit rate in first fiscal year. The % symbol below means percentage points of GDP, not relative percent change. The first and last fiscal years whose end dates occurred during each presidency are used. Transition fiscal years can therefore span two administrations. Figures are OMB actuals through FY2025 and are rounded to 0.1%.

▲ method_capital 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We found someone whose ai believes the President controls spending!

Congress controls spending in the United States:

Cumulative Share of Debt (Post-WWII to Present)When analyzing the raw accumulation of publicly held national debt according to which party held majorities in both chambers of Congress, findings from congressional studies (such as the Joint Economic Committee) reveal distinct differences:

(https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2011...)

Democratic Control ~57% to 74% of gross debt

Republican Control ~10% to 25% of gross debt

Split / Divided Control ~22% of public debt

▲ dfgknionio a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is kind of a fool's errand given that sample sizes are small and there are large exogenous causes. But the pattern is consistent and agrees with theory, so I think the comparison is worth making anyway.

▲ CharlesDodgson a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Could this be a lagging indicator, as in programmes take a while to setup and the budgetary pressure falls into the next term?

	▲	smallmancontrov a day ago \| parent [-]
		You really don't want to accept that our deficit expansion has been overwhelmingly due to Republican largesse, do you? Democrats aren't fiscal conservatives, but the last time they were able to expand the deficit in pursuit of social spending was LBJ. Deficit expansion during my lifetime has been overwhelmingly driven by regressive tax cuts, regressive bailouts, and wars in the middle east.

▲ zeroonetwothree a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Republican != conservative

Also some of the numbers are very sensitive to start/end dates (remind me, did anything happen in 2020?)

	▲	smallmancontrov a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, in 2020 we let Trump print $4T in a single election year and then he spent the next four years successfully convincing the weak minded that Biden caused the pandemic inflation by printing $2T over the next four years, running the printer at 1/8th the rate.