So she got "the lecture" about the fiscal ticking time bomb. Yes, I did vote for him, but not this time. This time I will be voting for Mittens. Why she asked? Because he has been AWOL on entitlements, gave the Bowles commission the finger, and the stimulus sucked, and more stimulus that he wants sucks even more, and now he has gone populist. I lay on her my rap that secular centrist socially rather liberal upper middle types I suspect will be abandoning Obama in droves, and that Obama will need to make it up with Hispanics or somebody.
First, as the above chart using nonpartisan Commerce Department data shows, Obama is the only recent president under whom government spending has shrunk. This is because the increase in federal spending has been smaller than the decrease in state spending. Arguably, the overall size of the public sector is what matters more from a macroeconomic perspective; the public sector as a whole has been implementing austerity rather than stimulus.
Second, though, again re the above chart, even if we're assessing the different levels of government on their own, it remains the case that under Obama, federal nonmilitary spending has grown more slowly than the private sector contribution to GDP. In this sense the trajectory of federal nonmilitary spending is sustainable. Now, it's not completely obvious that this will continue, since the American system of having basically a European-style welfare state for those 65 and above makes it unusually sensitive to the percentage of the population who are seniors, but that would take a reversal of the current trend. And even if that does occur, it remains the case that...
third, public spending as a % of GDP is lower in the US than in many central and northern European countries that have lower public debt and whose economies are broadly successful when they don't enter into hasty currency-union schemes with weaker economies. This suggests, broadly, that the US could easily afford to fund its current (quite limited) entitlement regime in a fiscally sustainable way with increases in taxation.
I remain unconvinced that the idea that entitlement spending growth is threatening the country's economic health is well grounded in an accurate assessment of the state of the budget.
Do you have a link to where you got these charts? I would like to read the context. I mean we have a problem. Paul Ryan says the computers crash if we keep on the present course, and you suggest these charts suggest, what me worry? Something is rotten in Denmark. I want to ascertain just what it is that is noisome.
One clear problem is the centralization of non-military government spending. The federal side is roughly at the same pace as the private sector, ie 8-9% over the last three years, while the state and local side is shedding outlays. Speaking from the state perspective the stimulus acted to drive state and local spending beyond sustainable levels, and when the stimulus stopped, those outlays crashed.
