For all the talk of "fiscal conservatism", Reagan was the first post-war president to drastically increase the national debt - he increased the debt by 186% due to insane deficit spending.[1] After Bush Sr. added another 1.5 trillion, Clinton was the most fiscally conservative president in modern times, adding only 32% to the debt after 8 years. GWB of course again increased the debt by 101% and also fuelled a trillion dollar war which destabilised the entire middle east.

Obama, facing the biggest recession in a century(which requires government spending to stimulate the economy) only increased the debt 74% after 8 years. The amount he added to the debt over 8 years is likely to be surpassed by Trump in just 4.

If there's one relatively fiscal conservative party in the US, it's definitely not the GOP. Yet the media just takes at their word and continues to associate them with fiscal conservatism.

[1] - https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-an...

It is misleading to fully assign spending outcomes to the sitting president-- Congress has far more control over spending than the White House. Clinton was anti-deficit but he also had the most conservative Congress in modern times after 1994 sending him appropriations bills. Obama had a similar dynamic after 2010. In both cases GOP Congresses imposed hard spending caps-- in fact, in 1994 they even clawed back spending from 1993.

The difference is that the Republicans use "fiscal conservatism" to really mean "Current President we don't like shouldn't get as much money".

And then they give all the money to the Republican Presidents when they come into power (see Tax cuts, which I personally consider to be lavish spending)

There's definitely a large group of Americans (likely a minority, but still a large group) who genuinely care about the debt, deficit, and balancing the budget. But there's really no major powers in Washington who actually do care. (And the few Senators who do care are nutjobs IMO. Its difficult to find a "reasonable" deficit hawk who doesn't believe in "Gold Standard " or other crap)

I'm talking about simple, and reasonable ways to get rid of the deficit here: increase taxes slightly, reduce spending where we can. Is it really that hard? Alas, no one I'm aware of is for both increasing taxes and cutting spending.

Apparently, cutting spending puts you in the group of nutjobs who believe that cutting taxes magically increases revenues due to "economic growth".

Increasing taxes (which is championed by the left) also puts you in with the Bernie Bros who then spend all the money made on free college education for everyone, and other such projects we can't afford.

Personally I think there may be better ways to spend money, but it's interesting that tuition-free college, which is the norm in europe, is considered something the US "can't afford" while a 700 billion dollar increase in military spending is passed without blinking an eye by people who've spent 8 years complaining about deficit.

The huge money sink in the US budget is undoubtedly the military. After the current increase the US probably spends more on military than the next 13 or 14 countries combined. If that can be reduced to spending about 2.5x what China spends(still overkill considering the allies the US has) then you have about 350 billion a year to either spend or reduce the deficit with. More than enough to eliminate child hunger, healthcare problems and infrastructure issues.

There are other cultural issues stopping tuition-free college in the USA. At best, tuition-free community college is the best we might be able to hope for.

Case in point: Europeans don't have for-profit companies extracting wealth from uneducated Americans.

There's fundamental problems to the US's education system at play here. We can't throw money at the problem and hope for it to work. We have to culturally fix those issues.

Tuition was free for in-state students during America's peak post war years in California and other places. It's not like it's completely alien to America. Nobody is advocating "throwing money" at the issue but you can't just sit around waiting for cultural change without doing anything about it.

State-based tuition would work out in America, but case in point on how awful our educational infrastructure is:

National Accreditation is basically a joke. Only regional accreditation matters. If people actually want to have "free college for everyone in the USA", step one would be to actually DEFINE a college education on the national level.

Which the USA does NOT have yet. We are very far away from the point of "sink money into this project". Ever talk education in the USA? How did "Common Core" do? The political culture is incredibly sensitive and paranoid about education changes.

Just think about how such a "free tuition" project would work. You'd have to have a national team standardize a curriculum. You'd have to then inspect various colleges to make sure they're up to standard. The ones that aren't up to standard lose federal money (aka: free tuition money), so it would be a death-spell for any school who fails.

Its not compatible with US Culture. US Citizens are too particular about how their children are taught, and would never accept people from far away telling them that... well... Thomas Jefferson is a founding father (https://thinkprogress.org/texas-board-of-education-cuts-thom...) or that the Earth is older than 6000 years old, or that Radioactive dating works.

Education barely even is a money problem. Its mostly political. Frankly though, I'd prefer if we fixed our High Schools first. Clearly a high school education isn't enough for most jobs anymore.

As with most things that can be measured, it depends on your POV and agenda.

In 2017 dollars Regan increased the debt by ~ 4.15 trillion, while Obama increased the debt by ~ 8.88 trillion (using the numbers found at your link (which is just one way of counting the debt for a president), taking the the entire debt increase as a lump payment in the middle of the presidency and using this inflation calculator to estimate the amount forward to the present http://www.in2013dollars.com .

So in absolute terms Obama increased the debt by more than twice as much as Regan who had "insane deficit spending" according to you.

Also you state that Trump is on track to increase the deficit in 4 years more than Obama did in 8 years. I believe this is a lie -- the estimated numbers even on that website show 1.233+1.225+1.193+1.119=4.775 trillion over four years for Trump which is marginally less than Obama spent over his first four years (even excluding the Economic Stimulus Act in 2009) of 0.672+1.276+1.229+1.652=4.829 trillion even before adjusted for inflation. On what planet is 4.8 trillion more than 8.9 trillion?

In other words, at the end of the day, traditional hog-trading politics as usual (going back 30+ years), for better or for worse, which frankly is a bit refreshing in the context of the other insanity flying around national politics this year.

"who cares about the national debt"

This can easily be fixed with some more tax cuts if you believe the GOP.

It's Laffer curves all the way down with them.

Do you deny the phenomenon?

I deny a western economy has ever suffered it because it requires an effective tax rate of 70% to observe.

http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1148666/FULLTEXT01...

I think people who poo-poo the Laffer curve deny that we are currently on the right side of it.

Has anyone ever tried to quantify the maximum of the Laffer curve?

Yes

http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1148666/FULLTEXT01...