Big Government in 1957?

In a recent episode of Equal Time for Free Thought Tim Wise was interviewed about his book, "Dear White America".  During the interview(about 45 minutes into the clip) he said that he interviewed a Tea Party member on what she meant by taking the country back.  She replied 1957.  He then claimed that at that time the U.S. had large government, but because it was big government for white people people didn't mind.

Figures from the Office of Management and Budget(see table 3.1) show that in 1957 the federal government spent 4% of GDP on Human Resources, which is the category for most social spending, compared to 15.3% in 2012.  Granted the government intends to reduce that to 14.9% to 15.1% for the years in the near future.  The U.S. spent 1% on Physical Resources, which would be the category that included the highways that the author mentioned as an example of big spending during the period.  This is less than the proportion of GDP that the U.S. spent on Physical Resources this year and matches the plan for next year.  In some years the federal government managed to spend less than this, but that figure of 1% would not stand out as abnormally high if it had occurred in a recent year. The Human Resources budget was much less in 1957 than it has been in any recent year.

I wonder if the author would consider a proposal to match levels of spending in those two categories to the respective proportions of GDP that were spent in 1957 to be a plan to implement big government.  As a whole government spending was smaller as a proportion of GDP in 1957 than in 2012.  In 1957 federal government spending was 17% of GDP compared with 23.6% in 2012.  There was one area in which government was larger, namely National Defense, but the author chose not to mention that.  The U.S. federal government spent 10% of GDP on national defense in 1957, which was far more than the figure for any recent year.

Tim Wise's claim that we had large government in 1957 seems to be misleading.  Government is quite a bit larger now, particularly in the two areas that the author favors.