cawacko
Well-known member
Well, if you check the link I provided, about total government spending, you'll see what happened in this era wasn't a high rate of government spending growth. Quite the contrary: there has never been a period this long in American history with such a low rate of government spending growth. Instead, the issue was very poor revenue growth. Some of that was due to underwhelming economic growth, but it has also been due to multiple rounds of upper-class tax cuts.
Also, there was a shift in government spending, in the same period. Previously, there was more government spending on services (at the federal, state, and local levels), which is employment-intensive. Now there's a lot of government spending on the military, which employs relatively few people dollar-for-dollar. For example, slash a hundred bill dollars from the military budget and throw it to education or infrastructure, and you'll employ a lot more people.
Government grew at a higher rate under GWB than it had under any President since LBJ.

