Spending Patterns of the Political Parties

In order to give my political views a reality check, I examined the historical records of the Office of Management and Budget in order to see what the spending patterns were when various presidents were in the White House.  Earlier I gave the surprising result that just about every president since WWII has increased social spending.

To this I have added the unsurprising results that Democrats are more likely to decrease military spending.  Republicans are as likely to reduce expenditure here as they are to increase it.  We have six presidents of each political persuasion for a total of twelve.  The Democrats were much more likely to decrease it than to increase it.  Five increased it, while one decreased it.

As for taxes, each party is four and two, except in the opposite way.  The Democrats increased taxes four times and decreased them twice, while the Republicans increased taxes twice and decreased them four times.  Thus we have the unsurprising result that Republicans are in favor of lower taxes and keeping military spending as is, while Democrats are for raising taxes and decreasing military spending.

Interestingly enough my results give ammunition to those who want to argue that Barack Obama isn't doing enough to push the Democrat's agenda.  Under his presidency military spending has gone up and taxes have gone down.