Certain myths take longer to debunk. Most of us know, for example, that Reagan ran for president promising to dramatically curtail federal spending. In reality, this didn’t happen. Likewise, when Clinton ran for president, his critics insisted that federal spending would reach unprecedented heights. This, we now know, was the opposite of the truth.
Fortunately, Prof. DeLong put together some numbers for his readers that help spell this out in a simple and persuasive way.
Federal Spending as a Share of GDP:
21.6%: Last Carter budget (FY 1981)
20.7%: Last Reagan budget (FY 1989)-0.9%: Change over Reagan terms
21.0%: Last Bush I budget (FY 1993)
18.3%: Last Clinton budget (FY 2001)-2.7%: Change over Clinton terms
20.4%: Forecast FY 2005 budget
+2.1%: Change over Bush term*
*Note that less than 40% of the increase in the Bush share is due to increases in the defense spending share, and that much of that increase (SDI anyone?) is unrelated to the War on Terror.
So, to review, Clinton’s reductions to federal spending were triple Reagan’s, while Bush’s budgets ignore fiscal sanity altogether. Good to know.