Federal spending rising faster than any time since New Deal?

Yep. All my life I've been told how the Republicans want to rein in Democrat fiscal irresponsibility. Democrats try to solve a problem by simply throwing money at it. Vote Republican get a businesslike government and a balanced budget. So, I always thought they were stingy when I saw them wanting to cut out money for the poor and what-not. Now I see, they are not stingy at all. They love giving out money, just not to the poor.

Well, a big part of the problem is the fact that the economy hasn't grown very much since Bush took office.

From 1950 through 2000, the Gross Domestic Product grew at an average rate of 3.5% per year. However, since Bush took office, the Gross Domestic Product has grown only at the rate of 2.6% per year.

If the economy had grown at the average rate throughout the 5.5 years of Bush's term, the Gross Domestic Product would be 4.8% higher than it is now. If the Federal government spent the same amount as it does now, it would only use up 19.8 cents of every dollar in that larger GDP instead of 20.8 cents. So the growth would be slowed considerably.

This statistic depends on which time frame you are looking at. I went to the Congressional Budget Office website and downloaded their Historical Budget Data pdf. Table 2 gives the Budget outlays as a percentage of GDP from 1962 to 2005.

An amended display of that chart is given below, (NOT amended numbers, just an amended display).



Two things become apparent from this chart which does not stretch back to the 1940's.

A) The percentage of GDP devoted to Federal budget revenues has been somewhat higher than 20.8 percent in the recent past

B) If going by just one year, Gerald Ford would seem to have the fastest growing percentage as he leaped from 18.7% to 21.3% from 1974 to 1975. Perhaps the USA Today meant a four year period, or a four year term of a president.

That's a lot of confusing baloney. Tell the people the truth about Bushie. The debt has never been so high. We now have a debt of 8,520,000,000,000 and each person in the US owes 29,000 dollars. That is Bushie's fault and our great grandchildren will still be paying off the debt!

Very interesting, Keltic! Thank you very much for the detailed info. Factchecks are good.

What I find fascinating in this chart is that all the years that federal spending rose to over 22% of GDP (1981-1986 and 1991-1992) were under Republican presidencies.

If we lower the bar to 20% (1968; 1975-1996; 2003; 2005), that's 25 years of which 16 were under Republican presidencies.

Reminds me of Holland. The classic, standard notion is that the leftwing Den Uyl government of 1972-1977 was the big-spender government that got the country into financial trouble. But in reality spending rose even steeper under the subsequent rightwing Van Agt government of 1977-1981.


True. I must admit that at first blush, reading the USA Today article, I thought - whoa - federal spending is now higher than ever since FDR? But then I looked again and saw it merely said that it had risen more sharply than any time since the New Deal. (Still - that would include WW2? <looks doubtful>)


Well, it did say, "has risen faster in the past five years than at any time since the New Deal". So it would be the rise over a five-year period they are talking about I guess, rather than year-on-year rises.

Still, looking at your helpful chart again, I dont see how that would hold up either. Over the last five years it rose from 18.4% to 20.1%, so thats +1.7%. Whereas between 1965-1970 it rose by 2.1%, for example, and:
1966-1971 +1.7%;
1970-1975 +2.0%;
1971-1976 +1.9%;
1973-1978 +2.0%;
1977-1982 +2.4%;
1978-1983 +2.8%; and
1979-1984 +2.0%.

So the assertion appears to be bogus. The only explanation I can come up with is that they only looked at five-year periods since the start of a presidency. Then the assertion does hold true.

But then again, if you're going to measure only from the start of a presidency it would be more logical to look at four-year periods. And then they would have come up with +1.5% for GWB's first presidency, but that would have been lower than LBJ's 1964-1968 presidency (+2.0%) and the Nixon/Ford 1972-1976 period (+1.8%).

Hmm. Just sloppy reporting on USA Today's part.

Nimh:

Thanks for the kind words.


My chart was full size when I posted it last night, but something seems to have happened to truncate it. So here is the chart again.

That is a lot of BS and those kinds of charts are used by the Bushies and published in the Wall Street Journal. The average voter does not understand those charts. The voters understand that the National Debt has soared under Bushie. It has gone up to 8,600,000,000,000. A good way to make Joe Sixpack understand is to tell him that every man. woman and child in the USA owes $30,000 because of the idiotic war spending by the Bush war mongers.

You The average voter

Yes, that fact does leap off the page when the chart is viewed.

Once you examine the facts, you see that Republican presidents are the real big spenders. The Democrats are comparatively frugal.

The kind of Bullsh*t written by Keltic Wizard and Nihm won't get through to the voter. How many people can really understand what they wrote? There are Millions of voters who need to know that every man, woman and child owes the government $30,000. That is what they need to know.
Not the garbage about the Groos National Product which the average voter will never understand. No wonder the Democrats lose. They don't know how to talk to the voter. They must be told that the Republicans are making you poorer and taking money out of your pocket for useless taxes and giving loads of money to the upper class. They must be told that the high prices of food, clothing and especially gas is the fault of the Republicans and no one else. For the sake of the common man, get with it.

Again: You The average voter


You must have mistaken this site for a political election campaign site. It is not. We are not "talking to the voter"; we are not talking on behalf of the Democrats either, for that matter (I consider them the lesser evil at best).

We are not in the business of campaigning. We are discussing subjects of interest with other people who are Able2Know. Just because we like it. If you're not into that, I'd suggest trying out other sites, where you can "talk to the voters" and tell them "what they must be told" with more success.

DailyKos might be a good place to meet likeminded people - but if you really want to win voters over for your November elections, you might better spend your efforts on a local newspaper's site, or better yet, go campaigning for your local candidate IRL, door-to-door, on the market square. Thats what I've done for my party, the Green Left, in the last couple of elections.

Here on A2K meanwhile, we're an opinionated lot. We already have strongly entrenched preferences. There's precious few votes to be won here, and even fewer with the approach you're trying on. If it sincerely is winning over the "average voter" you are after (rather than trolling, for example), you are absolutely wasting your time here.

Nimh
Now there you go again.
Making sense.
This is getting to be a habit with you.

OK-Nimh. I'll play your game. Subjects of interest, it is. At this time, the Gross National Product has gone up 4.6% since the start of the year.
Hooray! Cheers! But it doesn't mean a damn thing. According to the government's fixed statistics, Unemployment is only 4.7%. Anyone who knows anything about poverty in the USA knows that is a lie. The true figure on Unemployment is around 10%. There are millions of people who have become discouraged about finding a job and are not applying anymore. They are not included in the fake figures of 4.7%. Your figures are meaningless and irrelevant to the real world.