March 18, 2013 8:55AM # The Ryan Budget: Is Returning to Clinton-Era Levels of Fiscal Restraint Really Asking too Much? By [Daniel J. Mitchell](https://www.cato.org/people/daniel-mitchell) --- SHARE It can be very frustrating to work at the Cato Institute and fight for small government. Consider what’s happened the past couple of days. Congressman Paul Ryan introduces a budget and I dig through the numbers with a sense of disappointment because [government spending will grow by an average of 3.4 percent annually](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ryan-budget/), much faster than needed to keep pace with inflation. But I don’t even want government to grow as fast as inflation. I want to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. div ![Media Name: shut_down_question.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/shut_down_question.jpg?itok=S4RR8fg1) I want to shut down useless and counterproductive parts of Leviathan, including the [Department of Housing and Urban Development](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/question-of-the-week-which-department-of-the-federal-government-should-be-the-first-to-be-abolished/), the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the [Department of Transportation](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/time-to-shut-down-the-department-of-transportation-and-take-a-small-step-to-restoring-federalism/), the [Department of Agriculture](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/time-to-shut-down-the-department-of-agriculture/), etc, etc… I want to restore limited and constitutional government, which [we had for much of our nation’s history](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/why-western-europe-became-rich-in-the-past-and-how-it-can-regain-prosperity-today/), with the burden of federal spending consuming only about 3 percent of economic output. So I look at the Ryan budget in the same way [I look at sequestration](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/exposing-the-absurdity-of-washingtons-anti-sequester-hysteria/) – as a very modest step to curtail the growth of government. Sort of a rear-guard action to stem the bleeding and stabilize the patient. But, to be colloquial, it sure ain’t libertarian Nirvana (though, to be fair, the reforms to [Medicare](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/whos-right-on-medicare-reform-ryan-and-rivlin-or-obama-and-gingrich/) and [Medicaid](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/block-granting-medicaid-is-a-long-overdue-way-of-restoring-federalism-and-promoting-good-fiscal-policy/) are admirable and stem in part from the work of Cato’s healthcare experts). But my frustration doesn’t exist merely because the Ryan budget is just a small step. I also have to deal with the surreal experience of reading critics who assert that the Ryan budget is a cut-to-the-bone, harsh, draconian, dog-eat-dog, laissez-faire fiscal roadmap. If only! To get an idea of why this rhetoric is so over-the-top hysterical, here’s a chart showing how fast government spending is supposed to grow under the Ryan budget, compared to how fast it grew during the Clinton years and how fast it has been [growing during the Bush-Obama years](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/compared-to-the-reagan-era-the-bush-obama-years-have-been-a-fiscal-nightmare/). ![Ryan Clinton vs Bush Obama](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/download-remote-images/danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/142427067457/ryan-clinton-vs-bush-obama.jpg?itok=Ih1Nn0LP) I vaguely remember taking the SAT test in high school and dealing with questions entitled, “One of these things is not like the others.” Well, I would have received a perfect score if asked to identify the outlier on this chart. [Bush and Obama have been irresponsible big spenders](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/obama-is-a-big-spender-just-like-bush/), while Clinton was comparatively frugal. And all Paul Ryan is proposing is that we emulate the [policy of the Clinton years](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/to-fix-the-budget-bring-back-reagan-or-even-clinton/). Now ask yourself whether the economy was more robust during the Clinton years or the Bush-Obama years and think about what that implies for what we should do today about the federal budget. At the very least, we should be [copying what those “radical” Canadians and other have done](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/spending-restraint-works-examples-from-around-the-world/), which is to impose some genuine restraint of government spending. The [Swiss debt brake](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/switzerlands-debt-brake-is-a-role-model-for-spending-control-and-fiscal-restraint/), which is really a spending cap, might be a good place to start. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).