The GOP: The Party of Economic Deregulation (actually not really)

[Ancien Régime]

Keep in mind that GW Bush had Republican majorities 6 of 8 years. Reagan had a Republican Senate. Notice that Clinton was a bigger regulator in term 2 (with a Republican House and Senate) than in term 1.

This is another fun graph:

And all that "deregulation" sure helped, didn't it?

Or maybe, no amount of regulation will help with the distorted incentive structures created by easy credit and absurdly low interest rates.

I just thought this was interesting, seeing that the Republicans are generally seen as "pro-deregulation".

 

[Deck Knight]

The problem with graphing "Regulation" is the content of the regulation is more important than its existence. Regulation can span everything from the US Tax Code (Sarbanes-Oxley) to FAA rules to lending practices.

For example, 2002 and 2003 may have had much more regulation regarding surveillance activities, passport applications, airline rules, etc. in the wake of September 11th. Same with accounting regulations after Enron, Worldcom, etc. and the dot-com bust.

Not that GW Bush was a fiscal conservative by any stretch of the imagination, especially in the latter years.

 

[Ancien Régime]

Grouped by simply financial regulations, his adminstration increased such regulation by nearly 30%, while Clinton decreased it by 4%.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/130328.html

 

[Polis4rule]

Bush definitely wasn't fiscally conservative.

 

[Ancien Régime]

I kind of highlighted this to show how ridiculous the whole "regulation v.s deregulation" thing is when nobody really understands the underlying issues behind it.

It's mostly just a rhetorical football designed to create a false conflict.

Also, I wanted to look at the entire GOP, rather than just Dubya (See Reagan, Nixon, and Echdubya, wherease Carter was not much of a regulator at all.