The claim
Joe has heard it his whole life. Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility. Of business. Of economic growth. Democrats spend too much, regulate too much, tax too much. If you want a strong economy, you vote Republican.
It is one of the most durable beliefs in American politics. It is also one of the most thoroughly disproven.
Joe has never actually seen the numbers. Almost nobody has, because the people who benefit from the myth are very motivated to keep it alive. Here they are.
The numbers, since World War II
4.3%
Average annual GDP growth under Democratic presidents vs 2.5% under Republicans — every year since Truman
2.5%
Annual job growth under Democrats vs barely over 1% under Republicans — that’s 2.4 million more jobs per year
10 of 11
Recessions since 1953 began under Republican presidents
10 for 10
Every time the White House switched parties since WWII, growth went UP under Democrats and DOWN under Republicans. No exceptions.
Since World War II, the US economy has grown at an average annual rate of 4.3% under Democratic presidents and 2.5% under Republican presidents. That gap — nearly two percentage points every year — compounds dramatically over time. The New York Times reported in 2021 that since 1933, the average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades.
The pattern is so consistent that Harvard economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson called it “startlingly large — so large, in fact, that it strains credulity.” They noted a particularly striking fact: in every single instance since World War II when the White House switched from one party to the other — ten transitions total — economic growth went up when Democrats took over and down when Republicans took over. Every single time. The statistical probability of this happening by chance is less than one in a thousand.
Notably, in a 2004 interview, Donald Trump himself said: “It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.”
The specific record
The Great Depression: Republican Herbert Hoover
The worst economic collapse in American history happened under a Republican president who believed the market would fix itself. It didn’t. FDR’s Democratic administration rebuilt the economy through direct government investment — exactly the approach Republicans have spent ninety years calling socialism.
The 2008 financial crisis: Republican George W. Bush
The worst financial collapse since the Great Depression happened at the end of two terms of Republican deregulation of the financial sector. Banks were allowed to take enormous risks with other people’s money. When it collapsed, the Bush administration had to bail them out with $700 billion in taxpayer money. 8.7 million Americans lost their jobs.
Reagan’s “trickle down”: deficits tripled
Ronald Reagan cut taxes dramatically for the wealthy and promised it would pay for itself through economic growth. The national debt tripled. The deficit exploded. This same promise has been made by every Republican president since — Bush, Trump — and it has produced the same result every time: growth that goes primarily to the wealthy, deficits that get blamed on the next Democrat.
Clinton: the only balanced budgets in fifty years
Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy — which Republicans said would destroy the economy. Instead, the 1990s produced the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history. Clinton handed George W. Bush a budget surplus. Bush turned it into the largest deficit in American history through tax cuts and wars.
Trump’s tax cuts: $2 trillion added to the debt, wages flat
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act added $1.9 trillion to the national debt. Corporations used the windfall overwhelmingly for stock buybacks — not worker raises. GDP growth under Trump (pre-pandemic) was 2.5% — the same as under Obama, who inherited the 2008 collapse. Trump then added more to the national debt than any president in history.
The myth vs. the reality
Stock market performance
Since 1945, the S&P 500 has averaged an annual gain of 11.2% during Democratic presidencies and 6.9% during Republican presidencies. If you want to know which party is actually better for investors, the stock market has answered that question for eighty years.
Unemployment
The unemployment rate has fallen on average under Democratic presidents and risen on average under Republican presidents. Every Democratic president since JFK left office with a lower unemployment rate than when they started — with the exception of Carter, who faced the 1970s energy crisis. Among Republicans in the same period, only Reagan achieved the same.
Deficits and debt
The national debt increased under Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump. It decreased under Clinton and Obama. Republicans call themselves the party of fiscal responsibility while running up the largest deficits in history through tax cuts for the wealthy. Democrats are called spendthrifts while producing the only budget surpluses of the modern era.
Manufacturing jobs
Manufacturing jobs have increased under every Democratic president in recent history and decreased under every Republican president. The Biden administration’s investments in domestic manufacturing — through the IRA and CHIPS Act — created more manufacturing jobs than any administration in decades. Republicans voted against both bills, then took credit for the factories built in their districts.
When someone pushes back — what to say
They say:
“Democrats just spend money we don’t have.”
You say: “The only balanced budgets in the last fifty years were under Bill Clinton — who raised taxes on the wealthy and was told it would destroy the economy. It didn’t. Reagan tripled the debt. Bush doubled it. Trump added more to the debt than any president in history. The party that actually runs up deficits is the Republican Party, through tax cuts that don’t pay for themselves. The data isn’t ambiguous on this.”
They say:
“Regulations kill business. We need less government.”
You say: “The 2008 financial crisis was caused by deregulating banks — exactly what Republicans said would unleash growth. Instead it collapsed the global economy and cost 8.7 million American jobs. The same deregulation argument was made in the 1920s, and it produced the Great Depression. Regulations exist because of what happened when we didn’t have them. Business investment is actually higher under Democratic administrations than Republican ones — at more than double the rate.”
They say:
“The economy was great under Trump before COVID.”
You say: “GDP growth pre-pandemic under Trump averaged 2.5% — identical to Obama’s second term, and Obama inherited the 2008 collapse. The stock market Trump loved to tout performed better under Obama. Trump added $7.8 trillion to the national debt — more than any president in history. And when COVID hit, the economy collapsed faster and deeper than any other developed country, in part because the administration had dismantled the pandemic response infrastructure that existed to handle exactly that.”
The numbers don’t lie. The answer is SVR.
Stop Voting Republican — until they stop promising trickle-down and delivering it upward.
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