The 2012 Presidential Election is now only 3 days away and Americans are going to make a very important decision regarding the path that our nation takes. The choices are between current President Barack Obama and the challenger Mitt Romney. In our last two Gripes, I talked about Federal Debt and Unemployment, two hot button topics for this election. I determined that we were at a stalemate when it comes to unemployment versus 4 years ago and worse off in federal debt. Today I would like to talk about another hot topic and that is Federal Spending. Way back in 1792, the U.S. Government started to track Federal Spending. The President at that time was the father of our nation, George Washington. During that year, the government spent $5.1 million dollars which was a boat load of dough for that time period. Like me, you are now wondering what the heck did they spend all this money on? The money was spent on National Defense ($1.2 million) and Other Things ($3.9 million). Yes, it was listed as other things. Since that time, America's Federal Spending has risen every decade. Here is what our Federal Spending looked like for the past decades.
1900 = $629 million 1940 = $20.4 billion 1980 = $940.2 billion
1910 = $2.7 billion 1950 = $70.3 billion 1990 = $2.1 trillion
1920 = $11.3 billion 1960 = $151.2 billion 2000 = $3.2 trillion
1930 = $11.9 billion 1970 = $321.8 billion
As you can see, the Federal Spending has risen exponentially in every decade since the 1930's. The largest jumps came between 1970 and 1980 when Spending jumped an astronomical $618.4 billion dollars and 1980 and 1990 when it skyrocketed $1.159 trillion. The Presidents between 1970 and 1990 were Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Four Republicans and a lone Democrat ran the White House for those decades. Read into it what you may?
Now that you have a history on our National Spending, lets answer the question of are we better off now than four years ago? In 2008 when George W. Bush left office, the National Spending was at $5.3 trillion. That was an increase of $2.1 trillion over his 8 terrible years in office. The vast majority of this increased spending was due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, our Federal Spending is on track to hit $6.3 trillion under the Obama Administration. That is an increase of about $1.0 trillion over the past 4 years. It appears that President Obama has not increased or decreased Federal Spending over his first term in office. He has maintained the trend of about a $1.0 trillion for every 4 years since the 1980's. So are we better off now than we were 4 years ago? The Answer is yes and no. We have not increased the ratio of spending, but we have not decreased it either. It appears that like the Federal Deficit, Federal Spending rises every 4 years no matter who is in office. That tells me that whoever the President is, they have no control what-so-ever on Federal Spending. It also appears that when candidates talk about how they are going to cut Federal Spending, they are blowing smoke up our rear ends since they have no control of this growing monster. .
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