White House’s own budget<\/a>, we see that Hoover drastically increased the size and scope of government.\u00a0 When Hoover arrived in the White House in 1929, he inherited a surplus of $734 million (back when that was real money).\u00a0 After he left in 1933, the surplus turned into a $2.6 billion deficit.<\/p>\nOf course, some of this decline was due to lower revenues as a result of the depression, but looking at the outlays during his tenure and you’ll see a massive increase in the size of the federal budget, partly with the help of a Republican Congress as well.\u00a0 From 1929 to 1933, Hoover increased federal outlays from $3.1 billion to approximately $4.6 billion, a 48% increase. From 1931 to 1932, outlays surged 30%.\u00a0 Yes, Hoover was a real miser, a free-market fiend who hated spending the money of hard-working taxpayers.<\/p>\n
To put Hoover’s 48% increase in perspective, progressives often assailed President Bush as a free-market disciple who refused to spend money on levies, the poor, or the uninsured.\u00a0 During Bush’s tenure, estimated federal outlays surged 57%, even more than Hoover and LBJ’s Great Society (approximately 50%).<\/p>\n
So, the next time you hear someone say that a runaway free-market caused the Great Depression and our current crisis, just remind them that Bush made LBJ look like Uncle Scrooge and Hoover drove federal expenditures faster than President Clinton.\u00a0 Old rumors die slowly but this is one that needs to end now before we continue to perpetuate even more big-spending government boondoggles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There has been a lot of talk in the media (here, here and here) about how Herbert Hoover was a great miser and should have spent his way out of the economic downturn like Obama is attempting to do.\u00a0 The myth might be as old as Hoover’s administration: Hoover was a free-market Republican who let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,67,69,59,68,24,61,71],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-bush","tag-clinton","tag-deficit","tag-hoover","tag-obama","tag-spending","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"President](\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/hoover2-226x300.jpg\" "\\"President")
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