Where is Bill Clinton when we need him?

Thanks to Brahm Resnik and Channel 12 for inviting AFP-Arizona director Tom Jenney on the show to debate Donna Gratehouse about the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill moving through the U.S. House today.

Here is the link to the debate video:

http://www.azcentral.com/video/1066070917001

Gratehouse was just reading Dem talking points originating at the Center for American Progress, so we shouldn't blame her for the erroneous 1966 factoid she uttered partway through the debate.

But as Reason's Nick Gillespie points out, the Dems are throwing President Bill Clinton's laudable budgetary legacy down the Memory Hole by claiming that CCB's 18-percent-of-GDP budget target would take the country back to 1966 levels of federal spending:

…even more annoying given that [Center for American Progress] is headed by John Podesta, who served in Bill Clinton's administration, is the oversight that Bill Clinton's final budget spent just 18.2 percent of GDP. So it's not a question of "going back to the '60s." If you want to hit 18 percent - which just happens to be the average amount of revenue raised as a percentage of GDP since 1950 - you've got to go all the way back to 2000 and 2001 (see table 1.2, page 25)… And by the way, over Clinton's last five budgets, outlays averaged a measly 18.5 percent of GDP. If you don't think 18.5 percent counts as 'anywhere near' 18 percent, certainly 18.2 percent qualifies.

Most of us were alive the years from 1998 to 2001, and we all seemed to do pretty well with feds spending only 18 percent of GDP. (For those with short memories, that was before George W. Bush began his spending binge, and long before Obama kicked the federal Leviathan into overdrive.)

And in any case, as one blogger summarizes, the US federal government spent a lot less than 18 percent of GDP for most of its history (during which time the US became the wealthiest large country on the planet):

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/06/09/government_spending_and_the_18_of_gdp_myth_99063.html

More links on the same topic:

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/balanced-budget-plan

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/cbo-report-reveals-spending-disaster/