That the increase in expenditures was primarily military build up, it doesn't seem to speak to a compromise on spending for the sake of getting tax cuts though.
Simplistically:
- Dems demanded high (social) spending
- Reps demanded Tax cuts
- they compromised ("don't Tax but still spend")
- 9/11 demanded higher (military) spending, worsening deficits further
So I downloaded the historical budget data and used the outlays by super(function), combining it with the GDP data to get percentage of GDP.[1][2] I selected the top nine largest expenditures, NatDef%GDP, Educ%GDP, Health%GDP, Medicare%GDP, IncomeSecurity%GDP, SocialSec%GDP, VeteransBenifits%GDP, PhysicalRes%GDP, and NetInt%GDP.
Of these, the two that have the largest and significant changes from 2001 to 2002 and 2002 to 2003 were National Defense and Education. National Defense went increased by 4.07% in 2002, in terms of its percentage of the GDP. Education increased by 0.08% in 2002, in terms of its percentage of the GDP. The rest are insignificant in terms of their increase in contribution to the total percentage of increase in outlays to the GDP. National Defense was, by far, magnitudes larger than Education in terms of how much it changed.
In the long view, for instance, in 2000, Social Security accounted for 4.11% GDP, increasing to 4.32% GDP in 2008. That is a 4.9% increase in its percentage of GDP. Over the same period, military spending went from 2.96% to 4.31%. That is a 45.7% increase of its percentage of the GDP. Medicare was a 38% increase over its 1.9% GDP.
Social Security and Medicare are mandatory and self funded by FICA taxes.[7] Defense is discretionary, paid for out of general taxes. A decrease in income and corporate taxes apply to defense spending, not SSI or Medicare.
So, the decrease in taxes, cut receipts to pay for the military while, at the same time, military expenditures was increased. It is just simple accounting. Accounting doesn't pay for unrelated expenses out of a block grant that is for a specific purpose. You cannot mix accounts.
It was entirely the military build up that accounts for the major increase in deficits. And few doubt that, at least in terms of Afghanistan, that the tragedy of 9/11 necessitated this buildup.
There is no data to support "Dems demanded high (social) spending". Not by the accounting of the historical budget data. Not in terms of percentage of GDP. Not in terms of percentage change in contribution to outlays. It was, as you originally concluded, the increase in the military spending.
And here in lies the problem that I have with your final analysis. You did great, finding actual facts demonstrating the GDP increase, and concluded, at least by a first order eyeballing of the graph, that National Defense was significant.
They you go and throw in an unsupported "Dems demanded high (social) spending". We simply cannot make statements like this without supporting data. This became justification of saying "they compromised ("don't Tax but still spend")". FICA and SECA taxes were not cut. They were taxed.
We either know in fact, or we don't know.
Income and corporate taxes do not apply to SSI and Medicare. Even so, in terms of nominal total dollars, it is clear that the military expenditures saw significant gains relative to all other categories.
The only thing that happened was
- Congress enacted Tax cuts which was approved (willing to enforce) by the presidency.
- Iraq and Afghanistan required higher (military) spending, worsening deficits further.
And frankly I don't care who says they supported it or were against it. First off, the psychology of behavior and learning has demonstrated that people learn to do one thing and say something else. And there is no job that demands such a skill set as much as politics does. In the end, in that they agreed to it, then either they didn't consider it to be devastating, or they didn't care. One speaks better of the compromised policy then the rhetoric, the other speaks badly of the politician.
The normative economics of it is that there are fiscal multipliers for taxes, outlays, and transfer payments.[3] Even this categorization is a bit oversimplified. First off, they depend on the state of the economy. Second, spending multipliers have been delineated into consumption, defense, and investment multipliers. Lastly, they depend on the time frame under consideration, a time frame that ranges from one quarter to several years.
There is a ~1.5 spending multiplier in the regions that are impacted by the spending.[4] This can vary from 0 to 5, depending on the state of the economy and interest rates.[5]
The tax multiplier is a bit more difficult to measure in the real world. All multipliers depend on propensity to save or spend, so they change with conditions. The change with the state of the economy, going from high during recessions to potentially negative at peak output as they crowd out private spending. Tax multipliers appear to be a bit more complicated. Tax multipliers have been measures from 0 to 2.3 over two years.
All multipliers, given the wrong conditions, appear to have the potential to be negative.
Still, if taxes are decreased at the same time that outlays are increased, then both changes affect both aggregate output and the deficit. The two cannot be separated from their real effect based on who did it. The economy doesn't care who did it. And starting in 2001, taxes were reduced while military spending was increased.
Outlays and tax decreases cannot be separated in terms of fiscal policy effects and they cannot be separated in terms of Surplus(-Deficit) = Revenues - Outlays.
And one cannot escape the fact that the Bush admin was as Keynesian as it comes. Lower taxes and increase military spending, that is two fiscal multipliers at the same time. (Make big holes in the ground, then pay someone to fill them up again) And that is, on an accounting basis, lower taxes and increased spending.
And, in the end, it was all of Congress, as a whole, that approved. It was the presidency that signed it into law and enforced it.
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[1] The budget data is available at
Historical Tables | The White House
[2] You can google "treasury department historical budget data" and will also find a "PUBLIC BUDGET DATABASE USER'S GUIDE" which include descriptions of "Mandatory" and "discretionary"
[3]
http://academic.kellogg.edu/mckayg/macro/presentations/MacroPresentation11top5revised.ppt
[4]
http://www.columbia.edu/~en2198/papers/fiscal.pdf
[5]
http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~auerbach/measuringtheoutput.pdf
[6]
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/spn/2009/spn0911.pdf
[7]
FICA & SECA Tax Rates