Politifact must have had some time on their hands when they decided to grade this statement by Ron Johnson, Ayn Rand character actor pretending to be a Senator.
Johnson, in an appearance on CNBC’s "Squawk Box," argued "The federal government is spending 25 percent of our entire economy versus 100 years ago, we spent only 2 percent. The problem is the size, the scope, all the regulations and the cost of government."
It doesn’t take a genius to see we're a larger country now, with a more complex economic system, global competition, and larger population.
But Johnson is really going after our safety net programs, the real reason we're spending 25 percent of our economy. Without them, a more desperate public will work for near nothing, so long as they can sustain life and can hold a neighborhood car wash to help pay some bills.
Politifact said it best:
The largest part of the growth since the 1950s, the Office of Management and Budget reports, came from a category that includes Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, deposit insurance, and means-tested entitlements such as Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, the refundable portions of the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits.
"A big part of the difference is that as the U.S. got richer, a lot more services were demanded, and a whole layer of protections unknown in 1910 got assumed by the government," said Gary Burtless, a Brookings Institution economist.
Do you suppose RoJo has any idea how much of the money goes to the Pentagon, whose budget the GOP has declared immune from cuts?
ReplyDeleteThe answer is 20%. Link
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