Actually, I think the numbers may well bear out the impressiveness of Reaganite governance over Clinton's, from the perspective of moderating the size of government. Why? Because under Reagan, the growth of the federal government's share of the economy actually stopped growing for the first time in memory. You won't see any decline in this number in the 70's or in the 60's. Nor, for that matter, in the 50's 40's or 30's. In other words, the federal government's growth throught the 20th century was inexorable (http://perspicuity.net/civics/gov-acct.html) -- until Ronald Reagan arrived in the White House. Clinton merely continued the trend (as admirable as his team's economic stewardship may have been).

Ah, the bait and switch. So now you say Brad has it wrong because the point was government spending, not government spending as a percent of GDP. But of course the post you are both referencing says nothing about actual government spending. The AEI report just cherry picks a proxy to spread false witness. So now Brad has actually said something about variation in actual government spending and neither you nor the AEI report you shill for have done so.

And if you are really now so interested in the denominator then you should apply the same logic to Reagan's numbers. How much actual spending was cut? I suspect Clinton will come out looking better than Reagan in that comparison.

In a period when the business of government has been completely overwhelmed by the business of campaigning for office, it is logical that a direct link between the President's tenure and the state of the economy should be assumed.

This is because the state of the economy is consistently the single largest factor in determining how swing voters will vote and whether committed partisans will turn out to support their party's candidate. The economy having been mostly strong for over 20 years, both parties are eager to assign most of the credit for this to their own candidates, and of course to assign blame for the relatively minor setbacks we have had to the other party's candidates. The media, who follow political campaigns as entertainment, are as a rule skeptical of this tactic only when it is employed in an especially unconvincing manner.

Economists, though they often have a more realistic picture of why things happen in the economy, can't compete with a storyline that not only most politicians but the vast majority of people who cover journalists have a direct interest in perpetuating.

No mention, I notice, about where those cuts came from in each case.

Also the vast majority of people who cover politicians.

If you look at what Clinton wanted to spend on the Health Care Reform package, his numbers would have gone up to about 35% of GNP. What does Brad make of that?

The fiscal truth of Clinton years is that faced with a public reluctant to embrace his health care reforms and an opposition congress that wouldn't allow any grand spending, Clinton embraced fiscal restraint by default, not by choice.

You can make a powerful argument that his fiscal 'success' came from abandoning the democratic agenda and embracing a 'lite' version of the republican one.

At least, the one at that time ...

Dan, You claim that :

A big reason Clinton does so well in Brad's figures is not because of Clinton's containment of government growth (the numerator) but because of the economic boom of the 90's (the denominator).

But this is not true. The economic 'boom' under Clinton was in the second half of his presidency yet the spending to GDP ratio dropped from the very beginning.

As long as we're comparing numbers, let's look at wages for the wealthy:

Last Mean Wage Wage Increase
Year Years Top 20% Top 20%
R:Bush II 2001 1 145,970 397
D:Clinton 2000 8 145,573 4115
R:Bush I 1992 4 112,653 -147
R:Reagan 1988 8 113,241 2442
D:Carter 1980 4 93,705 1267
R:Ford 1976 3 88,639 -963
R:Nixon 1973 5 91,528 2102
R:Johnson 1968 5 81,019

So this shows the average wage increase during each president's term - for lawyers, doctors, that kind of person.

Crud, sorry about the formatting on that table. The columns are president, last year in office, average wage (top 20%), and wage increase (top 20%).

Josh -

Johnson wasn't a Republican. The war protestors just wanted him to be.

I don't know how that got in there. :)

Deborah Orin, Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Post, has a must-read column in today’s edition, titled Reporting for the Enemy. You can read it on my">http://allthingspolitical.blogspot.com/2004/06/reporting-for-enemy.html"> Blog, where I have posted it along with a link to the original article.
For links to news, views, politics, and government, bookmark All Things Political.

Some angel can answer this?
How much US gov. spending increased in WW2? as % of GDP.

LuckyLucky: Short answer:

Pre WW2: budget = 10% GDP
Peak WW2: budget = 44% GDP
Post WW2: budget = 12% GDP

Long answer:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf

Discretionary defense and non-defense spending:
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/temp/spending_components.png

Discretionary defense and non-defense spending as a percent of GDP:
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/temp/spending-gdp.png

Um, I don't understand the criticism about the use of a figure showing government spending as a percentage of GDP. Without the GDP in the denominator, it is hard to think about what the numerator really means. I suppose you could simply think about the level of government spending, even normalizing over time for inflation. But, that wouldn't give you a context. A billion dollars sounds big, but not for a trillion dollar economy.

Also, it seems silly to credit all budget policies to the president, when we all know it is the legislative branch that drafts the budget and tax laws -- yes largely starting from the president's budget proposal -- but often tweaked enough to change the results. I know plenty of Republicans who claim the Republican revolution was helpful to counterbalancing the tax-and-spend tendancies of a democratic Clinton Administration. Adversely, you could argue poor Mr. Bush is stuck because his party rules Congress and he can't just veto pork-laden appropriations bills they send him.

Perhaps it would be interesting to look at deficit/GDP figures in terms of who leads the House/Sentate/Presidency.

Or not.

Thanks Josh

It's surprising that Bush rised only 2% of total GDP(even with a bigger economy now) vs 34% in 2nd WWar. War on cheap?

Everybody does understand that Clinton fought every spending cut forced upon him by the Republican congress and from day one wanted to spend huge sums on his disasterous health care take over, an economic stimulus, and giant corporate give-aways under the title "industrial policy", right? This is the guy who during the 1992 campaign said it would be "dangerous to the economy" to balance the budget, right?

Clinton taking credit for reducing the GROWTH of government spending and balancing the budget with the generous help of the social security "trust fund" is akin to the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.

Whatever you say about government finances during the 1990's, Clinton was a passenger, not a driver.

Reagan is the only president of the 20th century to SHRINK non-defense discretionary spending. A small accomplishment I will admit, but a unique one.

Reagan is the only president of the 20th century to SHRINK non-defense discretionary spending. A small accomplishment I will admit, but a unique one.

And that's exactly the slightly veiled point I was making earlier. Nice you picked up on it.

Reagan is the only president of the 20th century to SHRINK non-defense discretionary spending.

Not according to this.

Ah, but didn't the definition of discretionary spending change over that period? What once was generosity now constitutes a right....