Comparison of Government Spending Under Reagan And Obama

Krugman provides some data on government spending during the Reagan's "Morning in America" and compares it with government spending in the Obama recovery. If government spending followed the track during the Reagan recovery, unemployment would be much lower today and our recovery would be better than "Morning in America". Instead we imposed austerity to make things worse. I doubt that these data will have much of an effect on those who accuse Obama of out of control spending. Nor will it affect those who believe that Reagan was a saint. When confronted with disconfirming data, true believers find a way to find faults with the data. The conservative think tanks spend much of their time doing exactly that kind of thing.

Krugman focused on spending in this article. He might also have provided data on the Reagan tax cuts which also stimulated the economy. Reagan's policies were Keynesian. He increased government spending and cut taxes which led to huge budget deficits in order to stimulate "Morning in America". Of course, during the Reagan administration deficits were not a sin in the GOP and Keynes was not the devil reincarnated.