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For nearly four decades, U.S. voters have consistently punished Democrats for success and Republicans for failure, and that is a trend that will almost certainly remain intact when President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office on Monday.
Over the past 36 years, despite an inexplicable public perception that Republicans are better managers of the economy, every Democratic president has inherited higher unemployment and larger federal budget deficits from their Republican predecessor than they have bequeathed to their Republican successors.
Don’t believe it? Here are the historical facts:
• George H.W. Bush took office in January 1989 with unemployment at 5.3 percent and the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year he inherited at $152 billion. He lost re-election to Bill Clinton in part due to the 1991 recession that pushed unemployment to 7.3 percent the month before he left office. The federal budget deficit, meanwhile, had bulged to $290 billion.
• Clinton inherited Bush’s 7.3 percent unemployment rate and $290 billion deficit and left office with the jobless rate at 4.2 percent and a budget SURPLUS of $236 billion, a record which inexplicably appeared to upset many American voters, who ultimately opted for the Republican George W. Bush over Clinton’s then-vice president, Al Gore, at the end of Clinton’s second term.
• George W. Bush inherited Clinton’s low unemployment rate and a record budget surplus and blew the surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy, which helped lead to the financial crash of 2007-08 that wrecked the economy. Bush left office with unemployment at 7.8 percent (and nosediving) and the federal deficit at $1.41 TRILLION.
• Obama inherited Bush’s mess and over the next eight years made remarkable progress, dropping the unemployment rate to 4.8 percent while more than halving the deficit to $665.7 billion. Again, enough voters found reason for a change to put Donald Trump in the White House in the wake of Obama’s success.
• Trump inherited Obama’s steady economy and unemployment at 4.8 percent, and experienced mediocre growth in the early years of his presidency only to watch it all melt when the COVID pandemic reached U.S. shores in March 2020. Trump left office with unemployment at 6.3 percent and a federal budget deficit at a staggering $2.8 trillion.
• Biden inherited the fallout of the pandemic and used a series of legislative successes, such as the infrastructure bill and Inflation Reduction Act, to lay the groundwork for strong economic growth for years to come. Biden presided over one of the strongest periods of growth in the past half century, adding 16.6 million new jobs, including 1.6 million in manufacturing and construction. Biden leaves office with the unemployment rate at 4.1 percent and the deficit at $1.9 trillion— still too high but nearly a trillion dollars less than during Trump’s final budget.
While Biden took a political hit on immigration, he leaves office with illegal entries running well below the levels experienced in Trump’s final months in office. Crime of all kinds has also dropped sharply during Biden’s term, now running below levels just prior to the pandemic.
Inflation, which spiked globally in the wake of the pandemic, has returned very close to the Federal Reserve’s benchmark of two percent. The stock market is booming and incomes for folks in the bottom half of the economic ladder have made gains like they haven’t seen in decades.
As many economists have noted, Biden will hand Trump one of the best economies in generations, making this yet another example of voters punishing Democrats for implementing policies that have led to solid economic gains.
There is little reason to believe that Trump will reverse this interesting trend in American politics. While his statements often bear little relationship to actual policies, should he be able to implement most of what he touted on the campaign trail, the implications will be serious for the economy and the deficit. From tax policy to tariffs, to his threats of mass deportations, Trump’s economic plans will explode the deficit, likely raise prices for many goods, and weaken, if not cripple, economic growth.
He will almost certainly leave office with a weaker economy than he will inherit and a budget deficit utterly out of control— a continuation of the pattern first set in the late 1980s. Which should, if both this historical trend and the Constitution survive, help pave the way for a Democratic president in 2028.