Saturday, September 04, 2004

Get well soon, Bill

The big guy's in the hospital with some heart trouble. I thought this would be a good time to thank him for the greatest legislative achievement of my lifetime -- his 1993 budget. See those blue bars going down and down until they become negative? That's his tax increases at work, turning the deficit into a surplus. And in case you're thinking to credit the GOP congress, please note that they don't seem to have had any significant effect on the rate of deficit reduction when they appear in '94. It's hard to see how they could, after Bill shut down Newt Gingrich's revolution. The red bars on the far right, by the way, show you what's happened to the deficit under W's watch. The data comes from the CBO.

Unfortunately, my side axis got blacked out and I don't know how to fix that. Well, I've got to get to sleep soon... leaving for MI in ~9 hours, which may cause posting to be light for a few days.

1 comment:

Neil Sinhababu said...

Well, the 1991 tax increase probably was a good thing. However, the '92 budget does show a higher deficit, so its power can't have been that awesome.