A Republican president created Medicare's drug benefit. The child poverty drop lasted a year, and Clinton balanced budgets with a Republican Congress.
The President who got us out of the Great Depression was a Democrat. The President who lifted 50% of kids out of poverty was a Democrat. The only President to expand healthcare was a Democrat. The only President in modern times that balanced the budget was a Democrat. Republicans only get you wars and economic crises.
Franklin Roosevelt was president for the whole climb out of the Depression. Child poverty did fall about half under Biden, for one year. Clinton's surpluses came with a Republican Congress. The health care line is wrong: George W. Bush created Medicare's drug benefit. The real fight is how much a party's past presidents should decide your vote.
What the post says or clearly implies, checked one by one. How verdicts work
Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, was president from the bottom in March 1933 to full employment in the war. The leading explanation, monetary expansion, began partly with his 1933 devaluation of the dollar. The New Deal's wider role is still argued.
The economy shrank for 43 months, from August 1929 to March 19331, nearly all under Herbert Hoover, a Republican2. The bottom came the month Roosevelt took office3. Real GDP then grew about 9% a year through 1937, by our calculation, and passed its 1929 level in 19364.
Jobs were slower. Official unemployment was 24.9% in 1933 and 14.3% in 1937. A 1937–38 relapse pushed it back to 19.0%, and it was still 14.6% in 1940. It fell to 4.7% in 1942, as the country mobilized for war5. That series counts people in New Deal work-relief jobs as unemployed. Counting them as employed cuts the 1934–41 rates by 4 to 7 points, economist Michael Darby found6.
The Federal Reserve's history of the era dates the Depression from 1929 to 1941, with "return to full output and employment" during the war7. Christina Romer found that nearly all the recovery before 1942 came from a growing money supply, fed mainly by gold flowing in after the 1933 devaluation and from a Europe in political turmoil8.
On Census's broader poverty measure, child poverty fell by nearly half in 2021, mostly from pandemic aid Biden signed. It lasted one year. The rate more than doubled in 2022 after the expanded child tax credit lapsed.
On the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which counts tax credits and aid, child poverty fell from 9.6% in 2020 to a record-low 5.1% in 20219. Census reissued its figures this year after a BLS error10, and the trend is "not meaningfully altered"11. The "50%" is the rate: 3.4 million fewer children were poor, among 73 million9.
The drop came from the American Rescue Plan, which passed with no Republican votes12. Census estimated its expanded child tax credit kept 2.9 million children out of poverty in 2021, up from 0.6 million in 2020. Stimulus checks did less than in 2020: 2.3 million children, down from 3.3 million13. Trump-era checks had cut the rate in 2020, from 12.4%9,14.
The tax credit changes were "temporary and limited to calendar year 2021"13. A House-passed extension, with no Republican votes, stalled when Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin opposed it15,16. Child poverty rose to 12.0% in 2022 and was 13.4% in 20259. The official measure, which ignores tax credits, barely moved in 2021: 16.0% to 15.3%17.
| Year | Children in poverty |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 12.4% |
| 2020 | 9.6% |
| 2021 | 5.1% |
| 2022 | 12.0% |
| 2023 | 13.5% |
| 2024 | 13.5% |
| 2025 | 13.4% |
Republican presidents signed several expansions. George W. Bush's 2003 law created Medicare's drug benefit, which now covers about 56 million people. Nixon extended Medicare to people with disabilities and kidney failure. The biggest coverage expansions were Democratic.
Bush signed the law creating Medicare Part D on Dec. 8, 200318. CMS calls it the most significant change to Medicare since 1965, and KFF counts 56 million enrollees in 202619,20. In 1972, Nixon signed what CMS calls "the most significant expansion of Medicare eligibility to date," covering nearly 2 million people under 6519.
Reagan signed the 1986 law that lets workers keep group coverage after leaving a job (COBRA) and requires hospital emergency rooms to screen and stabilize anyone21. Under George H.W. Bush, CMS says, "Medicaid coverage of pregnant women and children was expanded several times"19.
The post's larger point has support. Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 and the Affordable Care Act in 2010 were signed by Democrats22,23, and the uninsured rate fell from 16.0% in 2010 to 8.3% in 202524,25. CBO estimates the Medicaid changes in the 2025 budget law Republicans passed will leave 7.5 million more people uninsured in 203426.
Bill Clinton is the only president with a surplus since 1969. A Republican Congress passed all four of those budgets, and a booming economy did nearly half the work. Eisenhower, a Republican, ran three surpluses in the 1950s.
The government ran surpluses in fiscal 1998 through 2001, peaking at $236 billion in 200027. Fiscal 2001 began under Clinton and ended under George W. Bush. The last surplus before that was fiscal 1969, a budget from Lyndon Johnson's term that ended five months into Richard Nixon's. Eisenhower ran surpluses in 1956, 1957 and 1960, and Truman in four years27,28.
Republicans held both chambers of Congress from 199529,30. Three laws helped: a 1990 deficit deal George H.W. Bush signed, a 1993 Clinton law that passed with no Republican votes, and the bipartisan Balanced Budget Act of 199731,32,33. The Congressional Research Service credited policy with "a little more than half" of the swing and the economic boom with the rest34. A meme crediting only the Republican Congress would get the same verdict.
Leave out Social Security and the Postal Service, and the rest of the budget was in surplus in only two of those years, 1999 and 200027. No president has run a surplus since. Fiscal 2026 ended $1.99 trillion in deficit35.
Facts can't settle this part, so we don't rule on it.
Does a party's record in the White House tell you which party to vote for?
"Republicans only get you wars and economic crises" is a judgment, not a fact we can rule on. The record cuts both ways. By our count from NBER dates, 11 of the 15 recessions since 1929 began under Republican presidents1. The U.S. entered both world wars and Korea, and escalated in Vietnam, under Democrats36,37,38. The Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq and this year's war with Iran began under Republicans39,40,41,42. The right's mirror meme, "the party of Lincoln," makes the same move from the other side, crediting today's party with what an earlier coalition did. Its history is real too: 27 Republicans, then the Senate minority, joined 44 Democrats to break the filibuster on the 1964 Civil Rights Act43,30.
The economy has grown faster under Democrats, and the laws that cut poverty and widened coverage were theirs.
From 1949 to 2013, the economy grew 4.33% a year under Democratic presidents and 2.54% under Republicans, economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found44. "It has been the president, not Congress, that mattered," they wrote, and the gap can't be explained by the economy each president inherited45. By our count from NBER dates, 11 of the 15 recessions since 1929 began under Republicans, including 1929 and 20071.
The biggest gains were laws Democrats wrote. Social Security and Medicare were Democratic laws. So was the Affordable Care Act46,22,23. Christina Romer found that nearly all the recovery before 1942 came from monetary expansion, fed in part by Roosevelt's 1933 devaluation of the dollar8. When the expanded child tax credit lapsed, child poverty more than doubled in a year9, and a study of 2021 found no significant effect on parents' work47.
Republican presidents added drugs to Medicare and backed the fight against inflation. A Republican Congress drove welfare reform and the 1990s surpluses.
Judge parties by the hard problems they solved. Reagan inherited "double-digit inflation and interest rates near 20%"48. Consumer prices rose 13.5% in 1980 and 4.1% in 1988, by our calculation from BLS data49. Republican majorities, first elected in 1994, passed the 1996 welfare overhaul and all four 1990s budgets that ran surpluses50,29,30,27. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector called welfare reform "a resounding and unprecedented success"51.
Recession timing flatters Democrats. By our count from NBER dates, the economy peaked within a year of a Republican replacing a Democrat four times: 1953, 1969, 1981 and 20011. Economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian estimate that New Deal rules letting industries fix prices and wages explain about 60% of the 1930s shortfall52. And a permanent 2021-style child credit would lead 1.5 million working parents to leave the labor force, Kevin Corinth, Bruce Meyer and colleagues estimate53.
Presidents get credit and blame for oil shocks, wars, the Fed and budgets Congress writes.
The growth gap is real. Pinning it on presidents is the problem. Blinder and Watson found that oil shocks, productivity, defense spending and foreign growth explain up to 56% of it. Democrats "would probably like to attribute" much of the gap to better fiscal and monetary policy, they wrote, "but the data do not support such a claim"45. An earlier version said oil, productivity and foreign growth "look a lot more like good luck than good policy"54.
Budgets are different. The Constitution gives Congress the purse55, and the 1990s surpluses needed a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. The Fed is independent within the government56. Paul Volcker, a Carter appointee, led its fight against inflation from 197957. Even Romer traces part of the 1930s recovery to gold fleeing political trouble in Europe8.
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