Clinton and Obama, Polar Opposites

Last night, Bill Clinton introduced President Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee. He went to great lengths to stress their similarities, but failed to mention their divergent views on the appropriate size of government.

When President Clinton took office in 1993, government expenditures were 22.1% of GDP, and when he departed in 2000, the federal government’s share of the economy had been squeezed to a low of 18.2%. As the accompanying table shows, during the Clinton years, federal government expenditures as a percent of GDP fell by 3.9 percentage points. No other modern president has come close.

 

And, that’s not all. During the final three years of the former President’s second term, the federal government was generating fiscal surpluses. Clinton was even confident enough to boldly claim, in his January 1996 State of the Union address, that “the era of big government is over.”

When it comes to the appropriate size of government, Clinton and Obama are polar opposites.