I Can Haz Chart?

Stunning stuff as National Review's Peter Robinson asks John Cogan a question:

Q: The chart shows the increase in spending in dollar terms. Haven't you been able to find a chart that shows the increase in spending as a proportion of GDP?

A: No, I haven't—not in the time I've had available for Googling this weekend, which, since I've been scrambling to get the family ready to go back East for a couple of weeks (we're off at 4.30 this very morning) amounted to a little under half an hour. Sorry about that. And I'll check in the from the beach when I can.

Ross Douthat is amazed:

According to Cogan's bio, he's a professor in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University, and his "current research is focused on U.S. budget and fiscal policy, social security, and health care" - yet he can't find a chart showing one of the most relevant statistics to a debate about whether George W. Bush is a wild and crazy overspender? I know where to find those statistics right off the top of my head, and I'm a rank amateur: Just head to CBO.gov, click on Historical Budget Data, and flip to page 8, where you'll discover that in 2001, when Bush took office, discretionary domestic spending accounted for 3.1 percent of GDP, and in 2007 it accounted for ... 3.3 percent of GDP. In the years between, it rose as high as 3.6 percent of GDP, which is on the high side by post-Reagan standards (we averaged 3.25 percent a year in the 1990s), but way lower than in the profligate, post-Great Society Seventies, when we were spending as much as 4.8 percent of GDP a year on domestic programs.

One of the top results when I googled for "federal spending share of GDP" was Richard Kogan's article (the "K" makes all the difference) "FEDERAL SPENDING, 2001 THROUGH 2008: Defense Is a Rapidly Growing Share of the Budget, While Domestic Appropriations Have Shrunk" for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It includes helpful tables like this one showing that domestic discretionary spending has been a shrinking part of the Bush-era federal pie:

It also shows that if you combine homeland security appropriations with military appropriations, that the residual domestic spending component has actually shrunk as a share of GDP:

Now of course this raises the question of whether Stanford University really has budget experts on its faculty who don't know anything about the federal budget. The answer turns out to be "sort of." It turns out that Cogan isn't part of the regular Stanford faculty at all, instead he's appointed at the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank that's embedded inside Stanford. But they do seem to have him teaching undergraduates in some capacity.

Comments

Matt,

You have taught me the value of clicking through links, and googling people. You will be missed.

Posted by freddiemac | July 22, 2008 2:49 PM

I think the total track here is important. Discretionary domestic spending in GDP terms went up rapidly then held steady (which again means it was growing in pace with the economy) during the period in which the GOP was in charge of both the White House and House of Representatives. But when the GOP lost control of the House of Representatives, blammo--all that was reversed over the next two years.

What this helps prove is the old but true thesis that what is most conducive to spending restraint is split governments, as opposed to something like the nominally anti-spending party having control of both the White House and House of Reps. Of course, Matt probably isn't too concerned about spending if the Democrats are in control of everything. My point is just that Republicans aren't too concerned about spending either, when they are in control of everything.

Incidentally, Kogan's article is kinda shoddy. Up top, he writes:

"Some may think the President’s recent attempts to squeeze domestic appropriations are being made in response to an explosion of domestic discretionary funding during his Administration’s first six years. But this is not correct: there has been no such funding explosion for domestic discretionary programs."

But then all Kogan's comparisons are of 2008 to 2001. Again what that misses is the increases in domestic discretionary spending through 2006, which were subsequently reversed in 2007 and 2008.

Also, I don't buy his explanation for using funding levels as opposed to expenditure levels, which makes it look like domestic spending grew slower than it actually did--yes, increased expenditure levels can trail increased funding levels, but if the GOP had wanted to, it could have compensated for those trailing expenditures by cutting the funding levels for shorter-term spending. So, the fact that some of the increases in spending were originally authorized under Clinton doesn't change the fact that the Bush-led GOP happily spent those sums. And in any event, if you want to make this issue about appropriations per year, you shouldn't title your article "Federal SPENDING . . . ."

Still, as noted I think it is correct Bush didn't start exercising spending restraint in 2007 because of some principled response to prior spending increases, so to that extent I agree with Kogan. Rather, he put the breaks on spending just because the Democrats had taken over Congress.

Posted by DTM | July 22, 2008 2:58 PM

Matt, here's a chart of deficit vs. GDP from 1955-2004. A look at the Clinton years is rather telling. So much for the myth that any Republican president from Reagan on forward were ever fiscal conservatives.

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 3:06 PM

While I agree with the political point of this post, and Cogan's undoubtedly a hack, I don't appreciate haranguing him for his laziness.

As a lazy PhD candidate myself, I feel like this is a personal attack. It's the summer. That's when academics hibernate. We don't appreciate precocious bloggers bothering us with pesky requests for facts when they're already quite proficient with the Google themselves.

Posted by Philly | July 22, 2008 3:14 PM

Here's another chart from that liberal bastion the Heritage Foundation which shows revenue and spending increases per the recent Presidents. Republican Presidents certainly do show an obvious pattern, don't they?

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 3:24 PM

Now the top chart on this page is interesting. Notice how revenues dropped under Bush. Since 1981, there's been no similar drop in revenue. But all those supply-siders keep telling us that the tax cuts supposedly pay for themselves. GONG!

The increase in the slope of the outlays line is a pretty piss poor reflection on the GOP too.

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 3:29 PM

There's some funny business going on with Kogan's numbers. He's using authorizations rather than actual amounts spent, which he admits in the appendix makes his case look a lot stronger than if he were to use amounts spent.

The CBO data for actual domestic expenditures are:

Year %GDP
2000 3.1
2001 3.2
2002 3.5
2003 3.6
2004 3.5
2005 3.6
2006 3.5
2007 3.3

There isn't even a year in the CBO data where it got down to 2.8% GDP and going from 3.3% to 2.8% would be the biggest cut since it went from 4.5% to 3.9% from 1981 to 1982.

Posted by MattXIV | July 22, 2008 3:55 PM

The Stanford Directory lists John Cogan as a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. We report, you decide.

Posted by Etaoin Shrdlu | July 22, 2008 5:11 PM

So George Bush (well, actually, George Bush + 100 Senators + 435 House members, but we'll pretend for now that it's all Bush's doing) has reduced discretionary government spending as a share of GDP by a whopping 0.2% over seven years.

My God, the man is a maniac. I can see why you're so upset.

Posted by Mixner | July 22, 2008 5:36 PM

>he's appointed at the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank that's embedded inside Stanford.

Cue the Upton Sinclair quote re: It is difficult to get a man to understand something....

Posted by bartkid | July 22, 2008 7:48 PM

I think everyone's misattributing the A's in the Q and A to Cogan, but it's actually Peter Robinson doing a Socratic exercise with himself. Look, at one point, the writer QUOTES Cogan in the third person.

And in the intro, Robinson says "Readers instantly began peppering me with questions about the chart." The Q&A follows.

And so it's Robinson who couldn't find the chart because he's packing for his beach vacation. Not Cogan.

If I'm wrong, my foot's in my mouth, but if I'm right, this thread got a little out of hand in questioning Cogan's professionalism. ('Cogan's undoubtedly a hack,' etc.)

Posted by jf | July 22, 2008 7:53 PM

Agree with jf at 7:53pm. Matthew and Ross totally misinterpreted this.

Posted by nbt | July 22, 2008 8:29 PM

Hahaha, gotcha! But seriously. All this proves is that good blogging is a fuller-time job than most people think. It's the difference between the professional blogger, who has 30 minutes to surf the web, read something and compose a snappy paragraph about it before moving on to the next one, and occasional commenters like me, who really don't have time to learn html, post links and research charts.

Now, if National Review's professional does no better a job than the occasional commenter, I guess it doesn't surprise me much.

Posted by Aatos | July 22, 2008 8:31 PM

Excellent chart!

"Constitutionally legal" spending is shown to be only 40% of the budget.

If we could just eliminate SS and MediScare tomorrow, we've never been in a better position financially at any time in the entire history of America.

Posted by The dumbest mouse in all DC | July 22, 2008 11:17 PM

The Hoover Institution is, as its name suggests, really a vacuum cleaner: sucks in rubbish, blows out air.

Posted by James Wimberley | July 23, 2008 4:03 AM