government generally spending too much should just plain not be happy with either party. If it is true that the Republicans spend statistically significantly more than the Democrats, then those voters that are concerned about the government spending more than is necessary or prudent should support the Democrats.To put the hypothesis that Democratic administrations spend more than Republican administrations, I located the Federal Expenditures as a percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Spending), which can be found through www.fedstats.gov. Using the period of 1950 through the latest datum available, which was 2006, I first compared the annual expenditures by presidential party. This data includes all Federal expenditures including supplemental appropriations.
I was a bit apprehensive about using this data because on those years that power changes hands from one party to another there would be a period when a new administration would be working off the old administration's budget. I posed the problem to a retired Federal budget official who told me that in the past Congress and the Executive have employed an effective "work around." Congress passes a continuing resolution just before election time, then everyone involved with the budget works crazy hours to modify the budget for the next calendar year, thus effectively changing the budget to meet the new administration's priorities. He when on to say that even though there is a slight mismatch between the calendar year and fiscal year using the current year is the most accurate indicator of how much is actually spent.
The results could be accurately described as myth busting. In other words, it is time to prepare my Republican friends for a shock. The average level of Federal government expenditures for Republican presidents was 20.2 percent of GDP. Democratic administrations spent an average of one full percentage point less coming in at 19.2 percent. This was a statistically significant difference with the probability of getting this result due to random chance of less than 5 percent.
When it comes to individual presidents, the results were surprising. On the Republican side the biggest spender of them all was Ronald Reagan with an eight- year average of 22.4 percent followed by George H.W. Bush at 21.9 percent. On the Democratic side the big spender honors go to Carter at 20.9 percent and Clinton at 19.9 percent. The penny pincher honors go to Truman (16.4 percent) and Kennedy (18.6) for the Democrats and Eisenhower (18.0 percent) and Nixon (19.3 percent) for the GOP.
Since the president can only recommend, influence and veto budgets, Congress has
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