Now, a quick glance at this chart, combined with some unscrupulous narration, would lead the casual reader to assume that somehow through liberal "magic pony money" Bill Clinton reduced the deficit. Then the narrator could provide sweeping claims that Obama would do the same...and continue derailing the logic train to conclude that modern Republicans like deficits while Democrats are actually the fiscally conservative ones!
This is simply not true. In the comments on Yglesias post, a commenter points to the site containing this graph. I have edited it below.
As you can see (larger version here), during the Reagan and both Bush eras, the deficit did in fact increase. But during Clinton's terms it did also. Could it be the only reason Yglesias graph looks so compelling for Clinton's fiscal genius would be that during the majority of his term he enjoyed an economic boom that boosted the GDP, rather than that he (and his Congressional Democratic cohorts) actually made some decisions that decreased government waste?
This is the more plausible conclusion. Reagan increased the Federal deficit approximately $1.7 trillion (unadjusted) during his 8 years, while Clinton increased the Federal deficit by $1.6 trillion (unadjusted). Bush Sr. did slightly more than half that in half the time, and W Bush...well let's just leave him out of this discussion.
Now during the terms of all four of these Presidents the House and Senate entertained both Democratic and Republican majorities. So if Presidents and Congresses on both sides of the fence were all driving up the deficit with equal abandon, how can anyone possibly think that Obama (and the 111th Congress) will do anything but the same?
It is possible that Yglesias chart will be a trend; Obama will not increase the deficit compared to the growth of the GDP, but based on the gross deficit numbers, I highly doubt anyone in Washington intends to actually decrease overall deficit spending.
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