The Era Of Big Government Is Over?

Try this little exercise the next time you hear someone complain about "drastic cuts" and the "shrinking size of government". I was moved to undertake it after the whining from my local city officials about budget cuts became unbearable. What I did was start at the local level and work my way up determining how much money each layer of government was spending and how that broke down on a per person basis. I realize that it's far from perfect as I'm "double dipping" in some cases as funds often trickle down from one level of government to the next. Where it was possible I attempted to exclude this type of funding (for example my local school district budget estimate does not include state or federal grants or aid). I also only included the main players for sake of simplicity. If you really wanted to get into it you could probably include the local watershed and soil conservation districts and who knows how many other governmental entities that grab a piece of the pie. All the information I am including was gathered from city, state, and federal web sites (although often the information was very difficult to find) and I wasn't always able to match up the data year for year but the differences are for the most part minimal and don't have much impact on the overall picture. It's quite possible that I have made an error or two along the way so be gentle in your critiques. I mean we're not exactly the New York Times here.

My local city spends $41m a year with a population of 44,126 which breaks down to $929.16 a head.

My local school district spends $33m (not including city, state, and federal funds) with the same population of 44,126 which equals $747.86 a person.

My county spends $1.72b to cover 1,116,200 people another $1543.48 per individual.

We have something here in the Twin Cities called the Metropolitan Council which handles transportation and growth issues. It has a budget of $571m and its sprawl of control includes 2.6m people which means $219.61 a head.

Next up the State of Minnesota will drop around $44b in the next biennium (the figure of $28b that you read about is the general fund-the complete state budget for the 02-03' biennium was $43.11b-I tacked on either billion for 04-05') so I'll use half that figure and say $22b a year for the state's 5m people. That's $4400 for every man, woman, and child in the state.

And last but certainly not least Uncle Sam will spend around $2.23T (trillion needs a big t) for its 281m citizens. That's a cozy $7933.90 per American.

Add it all up and I figure my various government entities are laying out about $15,774 just for l'il old me.

Not that I'm complaining. I mean heck I like to use the roads just as much as the next guy. Speaking of that just how much do you think actually gets spent on the roads? Those in favor of big guvamint and against tax cuts always play the old "Well who do you think is going to build the roads you drive on?" card so it's worth a look. Near as I can tell my city spends around $4.14m, my county $70m, the state of Minnesota $1.9b, and the Feds throw in another $30b or so for the local, intrastate, and interstate roads. If you break it down again per person and total it you get $643.32 spent on me for roads.

Now I'm not some sort of neo-libertarian (former conservatives who have naively adopted the label in the hope of getting laid) who thinks we should privatize all the roads and be done with it. In fact building roads is one use of my tax dollars that I can wholeheartedly support. Just don't try to pretend that's where the real ching is going. It ain't.

So what's my point? We've got a lot of government spending going on out there and it ain't getting any smaller. Sure you hear about declines or flatness in government outlays as a percentage of GDP (interesting note that usually the same people -paging the Star Tribune editorial board- who use that argument don't apply the same measuring stick to the Bush administration's budget deficits labeling them "the largest in history" which while correct when looking at raw numbers is not correct when taken as a percentage of GDP) but the bottom line continues to be a government that looks at the taxpayer like Grandpa Simpson looked at Social Security, "Gimme, gimme, gimme. More, more, more."

And it is by no means solely the responsibility of big spending liberals. While Governor Tim Pawlenty has done an admirable job here in Minnesota holding the line on spending and tax increases, on the national level the GOP Congress and GW (especially) have proven to be more than happy to open the government coffers. Mark Levin has a good post on Bush's spendthrift ways at NRO's the Corner today. The words "massive new government spending" certainly have a frightening ring to them.

That's why I have a hard time getting all worked up about the ceaseless chatter on the the impact of the "cuts" in the Minnesota State budget. Last Thursday the Strib had a piece in the bidness section that claimed that although the economic impact will be hard to measure it could be significant. In other words, we don't know and we can't predict so we'll lay out some possibilities that can neither be proved or disproved.

Keeping in mind the fact that the state will increase spending by around $1 billion in the next biennium consider this quote:

"The path that we're headed on is for a much smaller governmental presence, which may be fine or may not be," Minnesota state economist Tom Stinson said. "But it's something people need to be aware of.

If only it were true Tom. If only it were true.