One of the tenets of The Tea Party is that lately the size and reach of the government is growing rapidly. If I have this right, they feel both Democrats and Republicans alike are responsible for extending machinery that supports them and for which they profit directly.
Discussing whether or not governments reach is growing is a thorny complicated issue so, for this debate, please completely ignore that question.
But surely it can be reasonably determined if government (both Federal and State) is growing much faster than the economy and population it represents.
The TP poster boy ,Thomas Jefferson, envisioned the US capitol no larger than a college campus, but then there where only 3 million Americans at the time.
Federal spending has more than doubled since 2000. Even accounting for inflation and a growing population, that’s a huge increase. State spending has grown too, but in absolute amount and as a portion of the economy.
The general trend in spending is up, up, up. Here’s a graph. It’s spikey, obviously, but there’s no doubt what direction we’re moving in.
This Forbes article has a chart of federal spending as a percentage of GDP, 1929-2011. It’d be inaccurate to say the growth is much faster than the economy and population, but it is growing.
The last 20 years, 1991-2011, show an increase as well, from about 32% of GDP to about 36%.
State data will, of course, be harder to compile and have more variance.
So it is, my mistake. It actually serves the needs of the OP better than a federal-only graph would have, so this is one blunder of mine that turned out alright.
I thought tax revenue was consistently around 20% of GDP, but that spending has often been much higher, resulting in our enormous debt. It certainly looks like more than 20% from ITR’s graph.
Yes, you’re right about tax revenue, but spending isn’t that far off. You need to look at only the red portion of ITR’s graph. It’s about 20% except for the recent year where we had the stimulus.
The premise is also wrong if it refers to civilian employees of the federal government. That number is down over Obama’s term, though some TP groups used the brief spike during the census to claim otherwise.
Yeah, I don’t think such a short time span is useful at all.
What I’m seeing here though is the Tea Party has a point. The Cold War is over. Isn’t it reasonable to cap the % of federal spending to GDP to some number, 23% perhaps? If not outright reduce it significantly?
The coming shift in the dependency ratio would make that tough. As Boomers retire, they’ll be producing less, and consuming Social Security and Medicare.
I’d say it’s time to seriously cut back on military spending.
The problem is that the last thirteen years has been one rickshaw ride after another in terms of bubbles and the popping. If we spent the same amount today as we did in 2005, the GDP% would be very different. I think it’s useful when examining between countries but not the same country in terms of “spend is skyrocketing!”
In adjusted dollars, federally we’ve increased by about $800 B since FY 2009 (the “Obama’s causing the sky to fall” years.) For reference:
GWBush’s first 5 FYs (FY 01 and FY 06) increase: $600 B
Clinton’s first 5 FYs (FY 93 to FY 98) increase: $300 B
HWBush’s 4 FYs (FY 88 - FY 92) increase: $300 B
Which I guess fits in with their mantra of individual liberty and personal responsibility. The Boomers voted for bloating government throughout their lives, perhaps facing the consequences of that is fair.
The other thing to consider is that when the economy goes in the toilet, the GDP either grows at a small pace or even shrinks. So a small change in spending, the numerator, coupled with a decrease in the denominator makes the increase in the ratio look far more drastic.
Historically, the federal civilian employees number has hovered around two million, since FDR. It has gone up and down by 100,000, more or less, but the two million figure is pretty much flat-lined for the past 80 years. (Since then the US population has skyrocketed as well as the budget.)
However, the growth of federal contractors since then has been phenomenal. It’s hard to find cite-able references but the generally acknowledged number is for every federal civilian federal employee there are four federal contractors today. Federal worker salaries/benefits are public record; it’s gonna be difficult finding salary numbers for federal contractors, plus their overhead.
