50 Years of Government Spending, 10 Facts You Should Know

A recent article 50 Years of Government Spending, In One Graph showed how government spending has changed over the last 50 years. It was interesting but it left me with some questions.

• There was no corresponding government revenue graph
• The graph only showed 3 points (years) which makes it harder to see real trends and spikes.
• The graph showed spending in each category as a percentage of total spending which can mask the effect of overall increases or decreases.

So I decided to take the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) data and create a couple graphs of my own.

• Included a graph for the revenue side.
• These graphs show all 50 years.
• These graphs show spending and revenue as a percentage of GDP.

Most of the findings were expected but a few of them surprised me.

1) Spending spikes up and revenues spike down during downturns.

The amplitude of the spikes roughly correlate to the scale of the downturn. This isn't really surprising because even if the government didn't increase the overall spending during a recession, despite more people in need of assistance, the drop in GDP would cause in the spike of spending as a percentage of GDP. At the same time, revenues are falling at even greater rate than the drop in GDP because the impacts of falling GDP are amplified in the revenue steams. Meanwhile government has the very natural, and historically effective, instinct to lower taxes help generate greater economic output during a downturn.
**1**

2) We have reduced the amount we invest for long term growth.

When it comes to things like education, science & technology, medical research and infrastructure we aren't spending nearly as much as we did 30 years ago (or 50 years ago). In 1980 we spent 3.1% and by the end of the decade it fallen to 1.7%. Since then it has been around 1.8%.
**2**

3) Revenue has been at it lowest levels during the last decade.

During the recessions of 2001 and 2007-2009 revenues drop predictably, again refer to Fact #1. However, during the modest economic expansion in the middle of the last decade revenues were below 18%. During the previous 50 years (and for quite a bit prior to that) the only times revenues fell below 18% were during strong economic downturns. In fact the only times when we have had budget surpluses or very small deficits during the 50 years we also had revenues near or over 20%.
**3**

4) "Welfare Queens" aren't getting a bigger piece of the pie.

For all of the uproar you hear about how we've turned into a socialist nation and an entitlement society, the percentage spent in this discretionary income security policy has been fairly consistent over the last 50 years. Over the last 50 years the average for this category has been about 1.7%. During the last decade it averaged 1.9%. Yes it has been higher in the last 4 years (2.3%) but this category is also subject to effects of Fact #1. As a comparison it was about 2.1% during the rough economic times of the early 80's. So the next time someone tells you welfare recipients, the pool or illegal aliens or bankrupting our country remember spending relative GDP on these groups hasn't really gone up in the last 50 years.

5) Revenue burden has shifted to the middle class 

Let's start with the false assumption that the middle class portion of the income tax has stayed the same over the last 50 years. There's plenty of evidence that the middle class share of the income tax has risen too during that time but I'd have to bring in a whole other set of data to show that (maybe I'll include it in a future post). But for now I'll start with the most optimistic (in terms of this point) scenario.

Revenue from the income tax has fluctuated between 7-10% during the period with most years being in the 8-9% range. During the same time the revenue from payroll taxes and other social insurance programs have jumped from low 3's to around 6-7%. Since the middle class pay a higher percentage of their income in social insurance taxes than do the upper classes (thanks to a regressive taxes in these areas) this means that the area where revenue has been increasing is disproportionally affecting the middle class.
**5**

6) The Non-Discretionary portion of spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, etc.) is really driving most of increases in spending and even then it's mainly just the medical portion

Again this is not really surprising as you hear this all the time. What might be a little surprising is that after climbing from just over 3% in the early 60's to just over 5% in the early to mid 70's, the non-medical portion of this category has remained fairly constant ever since. Of course, it is still subject to variations due to Fact #1 but has mainly been in the 4.5% to 5.5% range over the last 40 years.

Then we come to the medical portion of this category. It was almost 0 in 1963 and has steadily climbed to almost 5.5% of GDP. Whether you agree or disagree with The Affordable Care Act, something must be done. Whether that means we just let sick people die or we try fix the broken cost drivers, this will eventually bankrupt us if it is left unchecked.

7) The revenue percentage from corporate taxes is about half of what it was 50 years ago.

In the 60's, the average amount of revenue coming from corporate taxes was just over 3.7%. Since 1982 the average has been under 1.8%. So why do we keep hearing that corporate taxes are too high. Well, we do have one of the highest marginal tax rates among the developed nations. But at the same time we have lowest effectiverates among those same nations.

**7**

8) A larger percentage of time where spending was over 20% of GDP occurred during republican administrations.

Democrats are the tax and spending party right? At least in terms spending during administration term, the Reagan and Bush II administrations saw the biggest annual increase in spending relative to GDP (including the current administration as well). The Clinton administration saw the biggest decrease in spending. That being said there are many factors the affect spending that administrations don't control. But you can't have your cake, re: this administration has gone on a reckless spending spree, and eat it too, re: but the Reagan and Bush administrations weren't responsible the increases in spending.

9) Defense and Foreign Operation spending is down 50% since the early 60's, but is up 50% from the late 90's.

Can you imagine what this country would look like if we were still spending over 10% of our GDP on defense? We would have either had to make the hard choices a long time ago or would have been forced into them. A decade after the cold war ended spending was down to 3.5% and has since risen to around 5.5% largely due to reaction after 9/11.

**9**

10) The revenue percentage for excise taxes and trust funds has dropped significantly in the last 50 years.

This one really surprised me, since it seems like every year they come up with more and more excise taxes. There were only 2 categories of excise taxes (alcohol and tobacco) and one trust fund category (transportation) 50 years compared with 5 and 11 respectively today. However, 50 years ago the federal government received revenues from these sources at greater than 2% of GDP versus less than 0.5% in the last decade.

Footnotes 

This section is subjective observation based on the facts as I see them

**1**
What is surprising is that no mainstream balanced budget amendment that I'm aware of take this seemingly obvious principle into account. I would be all for a balanced budget amendment that had provisions for adjustment for GDP growth. During lean economic times the government could run a budget deficit but during an expansion the government would then be required to run a surplus to repay from the last downturn and/or save up for the next one. Unfortunately, all of the proposals in recent memory would force the federal government to cut spending and raise tax rates at precisely the time where doing the opposite is needed and leave no incentive to save for a rainy day when the economy is doing well.

Given these trends the current deficit can in large part be explained in large part by these factors...

• The recession of 2007-2009 was the worst since the great depression.
• Some of the highest budget deficits, in terms of percentage of GDP during an economic expansion, where being created during the last decade. This set the baseline on which the deficits expanded once the Great Recession started.

You can argue that the deficits should be larger or smaller but the expectation that they would be significantly smaller depending on different leadership in either the White House or the Congress is, in my opinion, unrealistic.

**2**
We need to make difficult choices in reducing our spending and I'm sure even within this category there are opportunities to do more with less. But we must not cut the overall spending in this area and if anything should be finding ways to increase investments in our future prosperity.

**3**
It's interesting that while this President receives all the blame for the increase in spending over the last few years (although if you look closely at the numbers the largest part of the spike occurred before he took office) he gets no credit for reducing taxes. While I agree he shouldn't get much credit for reducing taxes as it really more a factor of Fact #1, the same is true on the spending side and it is clear that the increase in the size of the deficit over the last 5 years has as much to do with lower revenues as it does due to higher spending.

**5**
This is just based on the assumption that all the other distributions of revenue base have remained equal. If you include the increase in middle class burden in the income tax and the dramatic increase in state and local income and property taxes which are also highly regressive in nature you can understand why most Americans feel that their taxes are constantly rising. I know those are facts not given as evidence in this post but are widely supported by all but the most Regressive of sources.

**7**
How is that possible you ask? There are just a staggering amount of deductions, tax credits, and outright loopholes in the corporate tax code (which is also true of the personal income tax code too.) Who do you think benefits the most from all of those deductions? If you said usually large multinational corporations you would be correct. They are the ones with armies of tax lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists. In fact 30 of the top Fortune 100 companies paid more to lobbyists than they did in taxes (with a majority of the 30 paying nothing or even getting many back). So who pays those higher rates that people keep talking about which are preventing the economy from growing? Your local small business owner who doesn't have such an army and along with her fellow small business owners actually account somewhere from between 60 to 70% of all jobs created in this country. Although the large multinational are creating jobs they just aren't creating many here.

We could likely raise revenue and reduce marginal tax rates at the same time if we took a black marker and removed a lot of deductions and credits many of which where created by industry lobbyist that draft much of legislation that makes it through congress and the serve little purpose other than increasing the bottom line for corporations that hired the lobbyists to "help" congress write the legislation in the first place. But given the latest SCOTUS rulings on campaign finance laws have made it nearly impossible to enact any meaningful reform, it seems unlikely a congress of either party would have the stomach for such an effort. 

**9**
There are those in the far left and in the Ron Paul libertarian wing that would take the approach of reducing our spending to that of our European counterparts and even get far below the levels of the late 90's. While I certainly think there are ways in which we can reduce our spending on defense I think there is a measured approach that is likely somewhere in between what we spend today and where we were in the late 90's.

There are certainly ways in which we can reduce our spending on defense.

• Reducing expenditures designed to help defeat the now defunct USSR
• Limiting our invasions of countries in the name of fighting terrorism to ones where the invasion actually reduces the threat of terrorism.

Note: Foreign aid is not included in this category as it is in the Discretionary-Other category. If I had been included in it's own special category you likely wouldn't even be able to see it on the graph after the late 70's (and even before it would have been a tiny sliver). In the early 60's it was around 0.5% and by the late 70's it had fallen to 0.08% and has averaged 0.08% ever since. To put this in context if you had redirected every dollar of foreign aid spend in the last 35 years and put it into an aggressive stock portfolio, it would have not covered the budget deficit for any one year in the last decade.

Here are the definitions and rationals for each of the categories

* Defense and Foreign Ops
Categories

• National Defense (050 all in category)
• Plus some the International Affairs categories (150) namely
• Intelligence gathering (154)
• Foreign operations (153)
• Security assistance (152)
• This does not include international aid or veterans benefits

Rational

• I included national defense with intelligence and non-military foreign ops (security assistance) as these are the types of expenditures that are related to things associated with a strong national defense. 
• I excluded international aid as this often cited as a cause of our financial difficulties, even though as I pointed out earlier, the amount we spend is less than the rounding error in these numbers. In other words, most of the people (though not all) that call for reduction in international aid call for increases in military spending and vice-versa.
• I also excluded veterans benefits because once the government makes the decision to take military action the contract that they makes is that we must take care of the brave and women that sacrificed greatly to execute those orders. So no reduction in defense spending should renegotiate that contract.

* Veterans Benefits

• Veterans Benefits (700 All in Category)

It's interesting that many commentators that espouse how bad our dependency society has gotten will almost always include Veterans Benefits in those overreaching income security (welfare) category calculations. Maybe they believe Veterans are part of the "government dependency" culture they claim we have. It's also interesting that spikes in the income security benefits of this category during economic downturns seem to match similar spikes in civilian income security spending during those times.

* Discretionary - Investment
Categories

• General Science, Space and Technology (200 - All in category)
• Transportation (400 - All in category)
• Community and Regional Development (450 - All in category)
• Education, Training and Employment (500 - All in category)
• Energy Supply (271)
• Agricultural Research (352)
• Health Research and Training (552)

Rational

• These are the types of expenditures, in general, that represent investment in our future. 
• There are probably small areas within this groups that don't fit that description but I believe that they don't represent a large enough fraction to impact the analysis.

* Discretionary - Income Security
Categories

• General retirement and disability insurance - excluding Social Security (601)
• Housing Assistance (604)
• Food and Nutrition Assistance (605)
• Other income security (609)
• Agricultural income security (351)

Rational

• These really are the categories that people are referring to when they talk about welfare and our dependency culture (sometimes lumped in with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment). 
• There are two difference between this group and the other group of income security category items.
• The other items are statutorily required. In other words Congress does not have to specifically appropriate money and that's why it's not considered discretionary. 
• The other group (including unemployment) is paid for by the same group of people that receive the benefits. At least as a general rule, although it's not a direct dollar in/dollar out arrangement but more like paying insurance.
• I wasn't sure where to put the agricultural income security category but it fit here better than anywhere else. It is means tested and is not specifically paid for by the group of people that receive the benefits.

* Discretionary - Other
Categories

• International Development and Humanitarian Assistance (151)
• International Financial Programs (155)
• Energy (minus the supply sub-category)
• Energy Conversation (272)
• Emergency Energy Preparedness (273)
• Energy Information, Policy, and Regulation (274)
• Natural Resources and Environment (300 All in Category)
• Housing and Commerce (370 All in Category)
• Consumer and Occupational Health and Safety (554)
• Federal Employee Retirement and Disability (602)
• Administration and Justice (700 All in Category)
• General Government (800 All In Category)

Rational

• This one is kind of a mixed bag. But without creating a even more categories and cluttering the graph even more, I used this as a catch all for "things the government does to keep the lights on"
• You could argue that some of these are more vital than others but this where they landed.

* Nondiscretionary - Income Security
Categories

• Social Security (650)
• Unemployment Compensation (603)

Rational

• See the Discretionary - Income Security section for the rational of the breakdown between that category and this one. 
• I split nondiscretionary up between this one and medical because there are different cost drivers at work in those two categories which I believe provide valuable insight.

* Nondiscretionary - Medical

• Medicare (570)
• Health Care Services - Medicaid and CHIP (551)

* Interest

• Net Interest  (900 All in Category)

* The revenue categories are direct mappings to the categories on the report

Don't trust my numbers. Think I have an axe to grind and I have manipulated the results. Go to the link below, which I were I generated the graphs from, and do the analysis yourself.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/hist.pdf