Quick Budget Facts

• FY 2012 Spending accounts for about 24% of GDP.
• The all time high for federal spending is 44% of GDP set during WWII in 1944.
• During Reagan's massive spending binges, the federal budget reached 23% of GDP. Slightly lower than it is today.  Remember he was a "fiscal conservative" too.
• Social Security spending accounts for 19% of the federal budget.
• Military spending accounts for 19% of the federal budget.
• Medicare spending accounts for 12% of the federal budget.
• Financing the debt run up by the fiscal conservative Reagan accounts for 6% of the total budget, $242 billion in 2012.
• Fiscally conservative Reagan increased federal spending by 21.5% and increased the budget deficit by 89.2% in 8 years.
• Clinton increased federal spending by 12.4% and turned Reagan's deficit into the largest budget surplus in history.
• Fiscally conservative George W. Bush increased federal spending by 32.2%.  He wiped out the budget surplus he inherited and turned it into a whopping $1.5 trillion deficit in 8 years.
• Barack Obama has increased spending by 8% in two years.  The deficit has shrunk from $1.5 trillion when he entered office to $1.2 trillion for FY12.