Ending Pandemic Aid Created A Disaster

Deficit spending spurs the economy and the economy needed it. It is hardly a new thing under Trump.

Spending like a drunken sailor, knowing the consequences will fall on the next administration is what Republicans do. Trump carried it to a new level.

It didn't need it until covid shut the economy down.

I didn't say it was "new". My point is that it was misconceived.

True, but the trick is to know when to stop deficit spending.
- Reagan increased deficit spending and boosted the economy when we needed it.
- Clinton stopped deficit spending since the economy was chugging along, resulting in the first budget surplus in recent times.
- G.W. Bush started deficit spending again for an economic boost, but then went in for a second and third tax cut, pouring money into the economy and blowing up the deficit. By the end of his term, there was so much money sloshing around in the economy that banks and institutional investors were throwing money at anything that moved resulting in a huge bubble of bad debt which burst in the last months of his administration resulting in the great recession which required huge government outlays to protect the banking sector (under both Bush and Obama).
- Obama started out with deficit spending but as the economy continued to grow, he throttled back and allowed the third Bush tax cut to expire resulting in a reduced deficit without any significant negative effect on the economy.
- Trump inherited a long term economic expansion and slowing dropping deficits and ... increased deficit spending to pay for tax cuts. Like the second and third Bush tax cuts, this flooded money into the stock market and caused a significant price boom in all sorts of assets.
- Covid put the economy in a tailspin and Trump increased deficit spending more to balance it.
- Biden continued the deficit spending but has backed off as the economy continues to heat up.

The reality is if you believe that there is a time for deficit spending and lower taxes, there must also be a time for financial rigor and higher taxes. IMO, Obama was pretty much pitch perfect with the 2013 tax raise. The economy was thriving, so the tax raise took the heat off and reduced the deficit. He probably should have pushed for another tax raise in 2016. Trump should have raised taxes given the hot economy he had early in his presidency. If he had, he would have been in better shape to deficit spend when Covid appeared.