The difference in the parties distilled down

Lots of people have looked at how the two parties govern and concluded, even admitting all the faults with the Democratic Party, that Republicans do not govern well. They tend to spend about the same (sometimes more) as Democrats but tend to cut taxes and so run up large deficits. Ed Brayton has a great item on this today:

For all the Republican rhetoric about smaller government and "tax and spend liberals," the fact is that over the past 50 years the size of government has grown more under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones -- and so has the size of the debt because of their reluctance to raise taxes.

From 1962-2001, the average growth in total federal spending under Republican presidents has been 7.57%; under Democrats, 6.96%. Bush certainly did not help those averages any after 2001. During that same period, the average yearly deficit under Democrats was $36 billion; the average under Republicans was $190 billion. So under Republicans, spending grows more but revenues grow less because they always insist on tax cuts.

And that means taxes must go up at some point to pay the cost of the deficit spending plus the interest on that borrowing. I think part of the GOP strategy for the past 50 years (40 at least) has been to drive up the deficit intentionally by raising spending and cutting taxes, knowing that when the Democrats are in control they will have to raise taxes. Then they can say, "See, the Democrats are always raising your taxes!" -- but without acknowledging that it was made necessary by their own tax and borrow policies.

The fact is that neither party has any interest in actually reducing spending. The difference is that the Democrats are generally more willing to pay for it with taxes while the Republicans refuse to do so. And I think that is a deliberate strategy on their part.

True. It's the self-fulfilling prophecy of conservatism: if you suck at governing, you run on the platform that "government sucks"...and so it starts to.  Then people stop believing they can hope to elect politicians on the basis of getting things done using policy and instead elect people who promise to do very little in general -- besides cutting your taxes, of course. Not only do Republicans admit there is a "starve the beast" mentality out there which never actually works, they don't even pretend to have an answer to basic questions about how to finance the huge deficits they create with their tax cuts for the rich.

There was an op-ed in the NYT on Sunday that gives a lot more details and background to this topic (spending and taxing by the GOP).