"Conservatives" vs "Tax & Spenders"

I did a little research following recent news reports of the largest monthly US budget deficit in history and stumbled across some statistics of note. It may interest you to know that official figures from the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) show the following:

Ranking the past 9 US Presidents (Kennedy thru Bush II), by percentage of US budget deficit increase during their terms, gives these results, from least increase (best) to the most increase (worst):

Rank

1 Clinton: 1.7% increase per year
2 Kennedy: 1.9% increase per year
3 Johnson: 2.8% increase per year
4 Nixon: 3.5% increase per year
5 Bush II: 6.5% increase per year
6 Ford: 10.0% increase per year
7 Bush I: 11.6% increase per year
8 Carter: 12.3 % increase per year
9 Reagan: 36% increase per year !!! (I believe they used the term "ballooned" for this phenomenon)

In other words, those darned 'liberal, tax & spend" Democrats outperformed those pious, self-righteous 'conservative' Republicans across the board, and by several orders of magnitude. The only 'tax & spender", who was anywhere near as bad as the "conservatives' was Carter and he was pretty bad. And, that 'Great Communicator" and arch conservative, moralistic Ronald Reagan's record was TWENTY-ONE TIMES worse that that nasty, libidinous liberal Bill Clinton's. (I do seem to recall Clinton using the recurring phrase, "It's the economy, stupid!")

I was pretty impressed by Bush II's ranking until I remembered 'well, he ain't done yet!"

And remember, these stats aren't based on dollars, but on percentage of increase in the deficit during their respective terms.

You can check these stats for yourself - I found this most illuminating!: