The “Big Government” Lie

Some details from this week’s jobs report:

Manufacturing: UP
Retail: UP
Transportation: UP
Construction: UP
Health Care: UP
Leisure and Hospitality: UP
Government employment: DOWN

This report is no outlier.  Overall in 2011, the private sector has added 1.6 million jobs while government employment has fallen by about 280,000.  Much of that is at the local and state level (and too many of them are teachers).  But federal employment alone was down over 2011 as well.

I never really know what right-wingers are specifically referring to when they rail against “big” government (Can you put it on a scale? Can you measure its height?) But if the measure of “Bigness” is “Number of government employees,” that figure is way down under President Obama.  In Reagan’s first three years government employment fell 2.2%.  In Obama’s first three years: down 2.6%.  You tell me who should get credit for shrinking the “size” of government more.  By the way, if the measure of “Bigness” is “proportion of GDP paid in taxes,” well, that’s at an historic low, too.

Democrats are fixing a giant mess left behind by Republican Presidency and Congress that ran up huge unpaid bills, added tons of government jobs and shifted the tax burden onto the middle class from 2001 to 2009.  And they’re doing it with a decidedly smaller government.

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