The debate over the federal budget-and the deficit spending it
tends to produce-has assumed a renewed urgency for reasons that are
painfully clear to all of us. Over the past thirty-two years-from
the presidency of Jimmy Carter through that of George W. Bush-the
U.S. government has in fact balanced its budget in only four of
them, while the fiscal challenges confronting President Obama make
a balanced budget anytime soon a remote possibility. Iwan Morgan's
book provides a much-needed historical perspective on this
perennially troubling issue.
The prominent role of Congress notwithstanding, Morgan closely
examines the role of presidents in the emergence of large federal
budget deficits in the 1970s and 1980s, the reduction of the
deficit problem in the 1990s, and its resurrection in the early
twenty-first century. He focuses in particular on presidential
budget policy to show how, over five administrations, deficit
reduction merely complemented rather than took precedence over
political priorities-and how Democrats came to support deficit
reduction as necessary to preserve the liberal state, while
Republicans largely tolerated deficits in order to safeguard their
tax programs. Along the way, he considers such curiosities as why
Carter and Clinton sought to reduce the deficit at a high level of
revenue while Reagan and Bush 43 took the low road, and why Reagan
and Bush 41 pressed for constitutional change prohibiting
unbalanced budgets while Carter and Clinton opposed such an
amendment.
Through this historical perspective, Morgan offers an innovative
analysis of the relationship between presidential budget policy and
the Federal Reserve's direction of monetary policy and probes the
emerging link between America's domestic public indebtedness and
external indebtedness. He also provides a fresh look at the growth
of the entitlement state in a generally conservative era and the
failure of efforts to place it on a secure financial footing.
The Age of Deficits boldly places the budget deficit at the
center of modern American political history. Morgan clearly shows
that, however much our recent leaders defined the deficit as a
threat, their responses to it ultimately reflected their concern
with reconciling its reduction with other elements of their
governing agenda.
General
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