The Obama Spending Binge Did Too Happen

I was watching the Rachel Maddow show recently.  I was quite surprised to hear that spending grew at a record slow pace during the Obama administration.  I doubted this at the time, but have looked into it, and it appears to be accurate.  It appears that she got her facts from here.

However, what wasn't said was that spending was higher even as a proportion of GDP than at any time since the end of WWII.  While spending has indeed decreased from this abnormally high level, it is still high by historic standards.  Further the government has never collected revenue at a rate that would match that level.

The point that she was making, that voting for Mitt Romney in order to restore fiscal sanity to the government is counterproductive to put it mildly, is well taken.  However, as a refutation of the contention that Barack Obama is fiscally irresponsible, this is fallacious.  The fallacy is known as "tu quoque".  Republicans could be the most fiscally irresponsible people on the planet, and yet that wouldn't imply that Democrats were fiscally responsible. In fact they are both fiscally irresponsible.

The point that Rachel Maddow made about Barack Obama not increasing spending is irrelevant since the budget under George W. Bush was excessively large to begin with.  Barack Obama is not guilty of starting a pattern of irresponsible spending.  However, he is responsible for continuing it.  The Democrats have failed to return our country to fiscal sanity.

The Democrats can point to the record of Bill Clinton as an example of how a democratic leader managed to balance the budget for four consecutive years.  The problem with this is that few Democrats see his record as one that they would like to repeat.  They have no desire to allow all of the Bush tax cuts to expire taking us back to the level of taxation that we saw under Clinton.  They plan to spend 15% or more of GDP on human resources rather than the 12% we saw under Clinton.

The Democrats might be able to balance the budget with a human resource budget of 15%, provided they are willing to let all the Bush tax cuts expire, including those for poor and middle class taxpayers, and cut defense spending to 0.8% of GDP.  If you think this is unrealistically low, it is the same percentage spent by Switzerland.  They are able to protect themselves very well with that amount.

If neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are willing and able to restore fiscal sanity perhaps we should look to the Swiss for an example of what to do about the problem.  We can supplement our system of representative democracy with tools of direct democracy that they have in Switzerland at the national level and in many U.S. states.  If our political process tends to produce fiscal insanity we need to change it.