The press does a poor job of providing context. This observation is neither unique nor insightful. But, assuming this is the case; we decided to do a quick comparison between actions taken so far by the Obama administration that have caused so much outrage among teabaggers and those of other modern American presidents. Based on about 15 minutes of research that most of the press seems somewhat incapable of doing, we found some interesting similarities with other presidents.
First of all, it's hard to figure out (as many have noted) what exactly is being protested by the teabaggers. The range is impressive. Some folks just hate anything Obama, and others have libertarian perspectives they feel fairly strongly about. Arguments range from Obama is not really a US citizen to the fact that he's a socialist one minute and a fascist the next. In general, here's what the purer intellectual points of protest tend to be:
1. Obama's spending will force the government to raise taxes. So, it's not a question of current taxes, but the liability that will force taxes to rise in the future (this is probably one of the more intelligent ways of framing the teabag argument).
2. Bailouts create moral hazards and undermine our capitalist system. His dismissal of GM's CEO, continuation of Bush era bailouts, and tampering with bank compensation plans suggest he's putting us on the path to economic fascism (fascism being the term used by Ron Paul as recently as yesterday).
So with regard to the first point, if we look back on growth of "big G" government spending we see some interesting trends.
These figures are, unfortunately, in nominal terms, but even then you see that total US government spending was rising for quite a while and then really took off at a steeper slope around 1982 and continued until it plateaued a bit in the early and mid-nineties. It then racheted/rocketed back up in the 2000s.
A look at national debt would suggest a similar trend in terms of government debt burden and time periods.
The graph looks at total federal debt (blue line) and debt as a percentage of GDP (red line). Obviously World War II represented a significant period of the spending with the government taking on debt (much of it in the form of war bonds) to finance the war (see the red line which represents debt as percentage of GDP). This high debt load was unwound over the following decades. In 1981 this downward trend reverses and begins to rocket back upward. That upward trend is not arrested until 1994 when it flattens and starts a downward trend until 2001 when it starts to climb up again. During the 1980s the debt blossomed from $700 billion to nearly $3 trillion establishing a credit card bill so high (in comparison to near-term past decades) as to engender America with a "fuck it" attitude. The teabag argument that high deficit spending leads to inevitable tax hikes has credibility. George H. W. Bush who was the president immediately after this period was forced to go back on a campaign promise and raise taxes in the wake of this long period of high government spending.
With regard to the second teabagger point of bailouts, in the late 1980s the Savings and Loans collapsed en masse after a period of deregulation, imprudent lending, and other changes to real estate law. This collapse led the government to form the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to assume the bad assets of these banking entities in public-private partnerships. This radical socialization of losses was culminated in 1989 under then president George H. W. Bush, but were structurally organized and conceived prior to his assumption of office.
In 1981, in support of the bailout of ailing Chrysler corporation, the White House pressed Japan for voluntary trade limitations to give capitalistprotectionist breathing room to the ailing government sponsored auto manufacturer.
And finally, with regard to the "fascism rising" argument; despite an explicit law against it, the White House funded what many regard as a fascist rebel group in Latin America during the mid 1980s. Because congress had forbidden the activity and because congress has the power of appropriations, the White House used a complex money laundering scheme involving Israel and the "Hate America First" Iranians to funnel arms to the latter and receive payment from the former. Funds were then transferred to pet rebel groups in Latin America. Thus, the White House was able to circumvent the checks and balances of the constitution (or conduct foreign policy with an even hand as the constitution suggests -which ever your perspective might be).
So, looking back in history and comparing the teabagger gripes to actions taken in the recent past by US presidents, we find an Obama clone in none other than Ronald Reagan.
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