Gov't Twice as Large as Ten Years Ago?

Tom Coburn says government is twice the size it was a decade ago

On the July 24, 2011, edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., sought to give some perspective on the size of federal spending -- a central factor in the current debate over raising the debt ceiling.

Addressing host David Gregory, Coburn said, "David, everybody's talking about the symptoms of our problem instead of the real disease. The government's twice the size it was 10 years ago. It's 30 percent bigger than it was when (Barack) Obama became president. The problem is that we're spending way too much money, and it's not hard to cut it without hurting entitlement benefits. But we don't have anybody that wants to do that without getting a tax increase."

We wondered whether Coburn was right that the size of government has doubled over the past 10 years.

We began by looking at the size of outlays by the federal government, even though Coburn didn’t specify which level of government he was talking about. (Coburn spokesman John Hart later confirmed that he had meant to refer to just the federal government.)

Here are annual figures from the Office of Management and Budget for total federal outlays:

Fiscal year 2001: $1.86 trillion
Fiscal year 2002: $2.01 trillion
Fiscal year 2003: $2.16 trillion
Fiscal year 2004: $2.29 trillion
Fiscal year 2005: $2.47 trillion
Fiscal year 2006: $2.66 trillion
Fiscal year 2007: $2.73 trillion
Fiscal year 2008: $2.98 trillion
Fiscal year 2009: $3.52 trillion
Fiscal year 2010: $3.46 trillion
Fiscal year 2011 (estimate): $3.82 trillion

So, doubling the 2001 outlays over 10 years would have meant a 2011 figure of $3.72 trillion. Since the actual figure is higher than that, Coburn is right that the cost of government has doubled over the past decade.

What about Coburn’s second claim, that government expenditures are 30 percent bigger than they were when Obama became president?

For this one, it depends when you start the clock.

If you use fiscal 2008 as the baseline -- which we confirmed with Coburn’s staff was his intention -- then the comparison is just about right. Federal outlays increased by 28 percent between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2011, which is just below the 30 percent Coburn cited.

However, fiscal 2008 ran from Oct. 1, 2007, to Sept. 30, 2008, ending almost four months before Obama took office. The OMB only offers figures by fiscal year, so we can’t pinpoint a number that’s pegged precisely to when Obama took office.

If instead you use as a baseline fiscal 2009 -- which started on Oct. 1, 2008 -- then federal outlays increased by about 9 percent, or well below what Coburn said.

Clearly, the shift of the calculation by just one year makes a big difference in the result.

We also considered whether Coburn intended to blame Obama for this spending increase. This was a tough call. Re-reading his claim, we don’t feel that his use of the inauguration of a new president as the cutoff point necessarily invokes blame. The entirety of Coburn’s comment encompasses government growth over a 10-year period, most of which was clearly under a Republican president, George W. Bush, and not Obama. And the inauguration of a new president is a pretty natural dividing line for making mathematical comparisons.

"No one has a more consistent record of being a nonpartisan critic of spending than Coburn," said Coburn’s communications director, John Hart. "He has been criticizing Republican and Democratic spending for many years."

We agree with this assessment, so we’ll give Coburn the benefit of the doubt on whether he intended to place the blame for government growth on Obama.

So what's the bottom line? Coburn is entirely right about federal outlays doubling over 10 years. And if you use one of two plausible measures, he’s right on the growth since Obama took office. But using another plausible measure, the growth of government under Obama was smaller. On balance, we rate Coburn’s statement Mostly True.

UPDATE: After we posted this story, a number of readers wrote or tweeted us to point out that we hadn’t adjusted federal outlays either for inflation or for the size of the economy. So let’s look at those numbers. The fiscal 2011 federal outlay of $3.82 trillion was equivalent to $3 trillion in 2001 dollars, so when you adjust for inflation, the increase in federal outlays over 10 years was actually 60 percent -- still a significant increase, but short of double. As for government outlays as a percentage of gross domestic product, they rose from 18.2 percent in 2001 to 25.3 percent in 2011 -- an increase of 39 percent, which is also not double. We agree that these statistics provide some useful context, but we don’t think they require us to lower our Truth-O-Meter rating. Coburn said the government is "twice the size it was 10 years ago." We think the most obvious way to make that measurement is through raw dollar figures. If you tell a friend that your son doubled his height over 10 years, we think most people would assume he grew from, say, three feet at age six to six feet at age 16. In describing the growth of your child, we don’t think people would assume you meant that your child moved from the 20th percentile in height to the 40th percentile. If a university touts that it doubled its enrollment over 10 years, we don’t think people would demand an adjustment based on population growth or the college-age makeup of the nation as a whole. We think our rating already takes into account the shortcomings of Coburn’s statement that the inflation and GDP growth figures point to, so we’ve decided to keep the rating at Mostly True.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...burn-says-government-twice-size-it-was-decad/


The St. Petersburg Times says it's mostly true. Doubled in 10 years!! No wonder we are broke!

But, the Left see taxation as the problem. They are blind to reality.



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The problem with our metastasizing, ever larger Sumo sized federal government is that it necessarily squeezes out money away from the hands of business and job creators as it takes up more room itself (like a bear in a camping tent that leaves little room for whoever else is in the tent).
For instance in Obama (S)Care, think of all the capital that is leaving the private sector now that government will be managing and running health care. The health industry will hemorrhage jobs at an incredible rate once government steps in.

Because the first order of any organism (government included) is to grow and perpetuate itself. Business must necessarily run smartly and successfully if it is to show a profit and grow. Government is under no such restraint or worry.
It has a totally different definition of what constitutes "success".

 

That is why DC and Virginia are seeing lower unemployment numbers. Housing has not taken the hit in those areas. I would love to see government slashed by 40%.

 

Great points guys.


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Without drastic reforms, the many tentacled monster in DC will continue to expand until it collapses under its own weight....crushing us beneath it.

 

If it would be of help, Congress is more at fault for spending than the president. Altho a president with his party in control of Congress can be a scary situation.

The last FY with a Republican Congress and a Republican president was FY 2007,,,,,,,$2.73 trillion.

Since then Congress was taken over by Democrats and then they got the presidency as well, thus FY 2011,,,,,$3.82 trillion

That is an increase of 39.9% since the change from Republican control of Congress to the present Democrat control of Congress.

FY 2012 will be different as Congress is now split. If that were not the case, the increase of the debt ceiling would have been a rubber stamp process.

 

Let's hope that the elections of 2010 & 2012 save the republic.


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In 1981, when Reagan took office, the federal debt was about $700 billion. in 1988, it was over $2 trillion. After Bush, it was over $4 trillion.

Reagan was the 1st President in history to put us over the trillion dollar mark. So his predecessors are just following in his footsteps.

 

"predecessors?" You might want to look up that word.

GWBush ran up overspending $4,901 trillion in 8 years. $51 billion per month.

odrama is overspending at a rate above $100 billion per month.

George was the "decider."

Now odrama is the "predecessor." Since no one before him has been this BAD!

 

So what you are saying is, you are ok with our debt now at over $14 trillion, all caused by Obama and the democrats. Is that why you don't want our politicians to be accountable with a balanced budget amendment, you want our nation to be so heavily in debt that it is destroyed. Do I have it about right bro?

 

It's All Obama's fault, right.

 

Not entirely, but I don't think you can make the case that he is free of blame either.

At least with that statement, you admit that the debt is a problem that should be blamed on someone, yes?

 

FDR's and the FRB

 

A lot of those weekly political broadcast media shows are propaganda to elicit more fingerpointing, and frustration. Sensational media sells and keeps the simple ones tuned in to see what is going to happen next "Mas Adelate" and "Ademas", as they say on the Mexican tabloid shows .

I don't buy into the broadcast media BS propaganda. It is a waist of my time and insults my intelligence. However, it is good to know what they are trying to sell the public so that one can use it to help analize the investment market. That is about all it is good for, if you know how to interpret what they are selling.

 

When you look at the actual growth of the Federal Government, it grew to epic proportions under Booosh in 2001, and has stayed that way since. Now it's cutting time.

When you look at State governments, they grew in the mid 1990s through the mid 2000s because the tax revenues of the individual States were making a lot of money. Because of their State ballanced budget laws, States had to spend the money. So what did they do? They build infrastructure, more public schools and facilities for their universities, and threw more tax money at public schools to hire more people. Today each State is trying to balance their budget with the burden of less tax revenue and a overgrown State Government system with the problems of keeping the infrastructure they build during the boom years open.

But unlike the Federal Government, State governments have been cutting a lot of programs and public safety services each year. The fed will need to also cut military, wars, and public services to survive with less tax revenue, and will need to cut more because they can't pay all the programs they created during the early 2000s. And with less tax revenue forcasted from corporations, and unemployed citizens, they will not be able to continue the services. So guess what? all the government regulations and their regulators that big corporate executives like Dick Cheney, Rumsfeild, and the pharmasuticial companies, and banks complain about will be axed.

So how can I use this to my advantage? If you know where to invest, you will welcome these cuts in regulation and services. If you are in a small buisness, you will be screwed just like all the other working taxpayers. Don't make the mistake in thinking small buisness will benifit from government cuts, because the tax revenue burden will be shifted to the small buisness and regular working taxpayer via your State government. That is how big corporate buisness and banks operate. In the end it will be the taxpayer who will flip the bill for the cuts via your State tax obligation.

 

Actually what I am saying is this country is being destroyed by partisan politics. When Reagan and Bush 41 were running up the debt Republicans/conservatives sat idly by and said nothing and Democrats raised hell. Now that we have a Democratic president Dems are sitting idly by and saying nothing and Reps are raising hell. So my point is it is a never ending cycle.

 

Yes it is a never ending cycle, except now, the US train is nearing the cliff. There should be no compromise on a balanced budget amendment. If this nightmare is ever to be fixed, hard choices need to be made, and the American people need to reassured that we will muster through these tough times, because tough times never last, tough people do. That is what I would want my president to say, he needs to be a leader, and it has become obvious, he is out of his league, and incredibly divisive.

 

Yep bush and the republicans really screwed you over.

Not really you need income .

 

The current president is Obama, and he is not addressing the problem or its root causes. That is the current problem.

 

$100 billion per month!!! Impressive.
But not as impressive as the world class denial leftists are in when they turn around and point at Republicans when their man is spending at an unprecedented rate that is burying this country. Unprecedented! Look up what the word means.

 

Ah, the tide is turning when people start to realize what is going on, finally!
Let's pull up our big boy pants, lefties, and finally take some responsibility for
what we cause, like big boys do.
You know that if, somehow, the economy had NOT been steered into the ditch, Obama would be taking bows and high fiving until the cows come home.
But when Obama is outspending Bush two to one it is cowardly and disingenuous to try and back away from the damage that he, Obama himself, has done. He's mismanaged a cold into a full blown case of pneumonia!

Grow a pair, leftists. Be big boys. Take responsibility for what you have done.

 

In 2007, the income of the govt was $2,568 trillion and the deficit was $161 billion.

Now the income is $2,173 TRILLION, down $395 billion.

But the deficit is $1,700 trillion, UP $1,539 TRILLION

 

Reagan signed an agreement with the then Democrat leaders of Congress that they would have tax increases and spending cuts to balance the budget. Reagan signed the tax increases but never got the promised budget cuts. Every budget he sent to congress was called DOA by Congress and the ******* press.
Keep trying to spin your Democrat way out of responsibility for that mess.

See the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings act known as the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-5850.00740/abstract

 

Of course he is, it just takes time.

 

Can you imagin how bad it would have been if the gouvernement wasnt spending that much? Or do you think that money magicly vanishes?

And why didnt you use the last year of bush : 2008 ? LOL