1992 $283.9 $ 750.1 2000 $319.9 $ 951.4 2008 $401.4 $1,304.1 2009 $449.8 $2,050.7 2010 $519.8 $1,650.7 2011 $463.7 $1,638.6 2012 $441.4 $1,582.1
2011 and on reflect Obama budget proposals. For mandatory (the second column), 2009 must include TARP, and the reductions post-'09 reflect paybacks of TARP money and science fiction health care reforms.
>From my standpoint, the growth in discretionary from '92 to '00 (12%)
is pathetic. Bush II over same length of time was about 25%. That's
just discretionary. Most of the mandatory growth under Clinton is
automatic. With Bush we had the drug benefit on top of automatic
growth.
Note the nice bumps in '09 and '10. Not also that under the "freeze that begins in 2011" (meaning that level prevails in 2012), discretionary spending is still 15% higher than 2008. Not great, bad fiscal policy, but not exactly catastrophic in structural terms.
Not exactly drowning in the bathtub.
The reason Obama got a laugh when he talked about 2011 was because this is the old game. You propose cuts for fiscal years beyond the one you are actually budgeting for (2011). Makes the projected deficit, based on ten-year windows, look better. "That's how budgeting works." Indeed.
On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 27 Jan 2010, Max Sawicky wrote:
>
>>>> In 1991 it was 15.1% of GDP, a peak after some hits during the Reagan
>>>> administration (roughly 3% of GDP, which is big in this context). Bush I
>>>> nearly restored it to pre-Reagan levels. Clinton took it
>>>> down to as low as 13.6. Bush II brought it back to 15.3, nearly the
>>>> post-WWIIpeak.
>>>
>>> So Max, are you saying social spending was better under Bush I and Bush
>>> II
>>> than it was under Clinton?
>>
>> Yes. I've been saying this for years.
>
> One last question to add to all the ones you've already fielded: could this
> possibly be an artifact of the GDP comparison? The economy was pretty flat
> under Bush I and II; GDP growth averaged 3.7% per year under Clinton. Could
> this explain part of these ratio -- that what it was being compared to was
> growing so much slower under the Bushes? Do you get the same trends if you
> compared spending in absolute real dollars?
>
> Michael
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