McCain's latest "tax and spend" attack doesn't jive

Today in Cleveland, Ohio, McCain was peddling his latest in a long line of failed campaign tactics. He is now proclaiming that Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal and the country can't survive if the Democrats control the White House, Senate and Congress.

Although facts don't matter to McCain, they do matter to most of the rest of us. The fact is the “tax and spend” label the Republicans have hung on the shoulders of Democrats for more than 60 years is a myth of their own creation. Here are the facts:

• When Republicans were in control of the presidency and both Houses of Congress, neither debt, nor government spending was ever reduced.
• The last time a Republican Congress reduced the national debt was in 1947, under Harry Truman.
• The last time the debt was reduced was in 1961 during President Kennedy’s first year in office.
• Since President Johnson, every Democrat has increased revenue more than spending.
• Under all five Republican Presidents, since Nixon, government revenue has decreased and spending has increased.
• Clinton raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year. The previous and current Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush II) raised the debt an average of 10.8% per year.
• Under the first five years of George W. Bush, federal spending increased by 45%. During the eight Clinton years federal spending increased 32%.
• The last year Clinton was in office the nation borrowed $18 billion. The first year Bush II was in office he borrowed $133 billion.
• The increase in total debt under Reagan was larger than all the debt accumulated by all the presidents before him combined.

The truth is the Republicans borrow and spend, taking money from countries like China without devising any way to raise the revenue needed to pay off our debts. And thanks to Bush’s brilliant strategy of cutting taxes without cutting spending, in 2003 he set a record for the biggest single yearly dollar increase in debt in the nation’s history. He did it again in 2004, increasing the debt more than half a trillion dollars. Of course the debt is so large now (more than $10 trillion) it no longer fits on the ticker board in New York City.

Handing over the economy to the Republicans again would be like giving a bus load of kids a credit card and cutting them loose in a candy shop.