In article ,
(Don Klipstein) wrote:

What about that recession we had after Bush took office? Back then,
rightwingers liked to talk about Reagan setting a record for length of an
economic expansion, though that record was broken by one that Clinton
presided over.


Recessions, by definition are two or more quarters of negative GDP
growth. The recession you are talking about, according to the people who
track such things, started in March 2001, his first quarter in office.
It started during Clinton's presidency. Of course, that is based on a
rather fallacious assumption that ANY president has an impact on the
business cycle.




2001-2002: 4.8%,
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/H....03062003.news

(During a recession the rightwingers liked to blame on Clinton!)

And left wingers like to blame on Bush. See above for the idiocy of
both these statements.



The current deficit is about 1.5% of the budget. That's lower than the '70s,
'80s, and most of the '90s.

The fiscal years in Clinton's second term had surpluses, at least 3 of
them. You were hoping we forgot that? One even had a surplus when
excluding the Social Security surplus.

But not the Medicare part of the surplus. Of course, you can't hold
Clinton accountable for taking advantage of an accounting fraud in place
since the early 80s.


Who presided over most of a goodly 8 year stretch of GDP growth?

See above. This is the G&G expansion anyway. Brought about by
Greenspan by his money supply growth and low interest rate policies at
the fed and Bill Gates as an alliterative proxy for the absolutely
unheard of increases in productivity brought about by computerization.



Louisiana statewide was Republican at least since and including the 1980
elections.
Which is why both the NOLA mayor and the Governor were Dems at
the time.