At the Congressional Budget Office (via Mankiw) is this stunning chart:
Total Revenues and Outlays in CBO’s Baseline and Under the President’s Budget (Percentage of GDP)
click to enlarge
While the main takeaway is the current peak in outlays and trough in revenues, one shouldn’t ignore the strong pattern of Clinton-era fiscal responsibility. In the Tea Party protests, I sometimes saw Obama lumped with Bush and Clinton on spending. At least as to Clinton, this is a very unfair comparison. The Clinton administration was, for the most part, very frugal, a policy for which it gets too little credit (of course, it had help on this front from the Congress). On balance, the Clinton administration’s frugality was a very good thing (though with hindsight it also had its downside, ie, preventing timely reconstruction of the levies in New Orleans).
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