[quote=SK in CV]
While I’d hesitate to necessarily attribute it entirely to who was in the white house, what the chart you linked to shows is that during each of the previous 4 democratic administrations over the last 50 years, spending, as a percentage of GDP, actually dropped, with the exception of the very end of the Johnson administration, when the costs of Viet Nam really kicked in. That same measurement grew during each of the Republican administrations. Each dealt with their own special economic circumstances, and absent examining those circumstances, this data is inconclusive. But it does tend to disprove the “tax and spend” rhetoric.[/quote]
Very true. Defense spending and wars have way more to do with growing the size of government than anything else. Unfortunately, Rush Limbaugh and Fox have done an excellent job of convincing people like Hobie that it’s welfare spending that is growing the size of government. They’ve tapped into that ‘us-versus-them’ (the them being the poor) emotion that those with lesser-developed critical thinking skills are susceptible to.
The Democrats don’t even try to counter the inaccurate ‘big government’ label pinned on them by those on the right. It would be easy to do, but I think Democrats tend to be more intellectual and thus don’t focus so much on messages designed to generate an emotional response.
