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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Hooray for Mr. Newt!

I just noticed something from my last post. The only Speaker of the House whose term ended with a smaller deficit than they started with was Newt Gingrich. Deficits here are listed in constant year 2000 dollars, in billions.

Tip O'Neill (D) - Start: 136, End: 318

Jim Wright (D) - 1987-88: Start: 210, End: 211

Tom Foley (D) - 1989-94: Start: 200, End: 228

Newt Gingrich (R) - 1995-98: Start: 180, End: 72

Denny Hastert (R) - 1999-2006: Start: 129, End: 210

Nancy Pelosi (D) - 2007-2008: Start: 162, End: 409

That's not a coincidence.

Hooray for Mr. Newt!
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6:40 AM

    Exactly. Oddly enough, even though my congressman is a democrat, he's been pretty good about voting to keep spending down. If we can keep the congressmen from both parties who are in favor of financial discipline, and ditch the rest, we might actually have a chance, regardless of what outrageous spending proposals are come up with by whoever wins the presidency.

    I'm expecting that we are most likely going to end up with a bad 2 years, since its looking like we'll have a Democrat for President and Democrats controlling Congress. But, if a successor to Newt can be found to pull a repeat of what he did under Clinton, that might be the best situation we can hope for at this point.

    If we can soundly spank the free-spenders, regardless of which party they are in, maybe the next crop of candidates (and the ones who manage to survive the campaign by the skins of their teeth) will get the message.

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