Government at all levels now eats up twice the share of the national economy it consumed 60 years ago. Are the government services you receive twice as valuable?

That challenge should become the key question in the ongoing battle over Obamacare. Given the obvious tendency of government to spend more and more with no discernable benefit to the public, why should anyone expect a better result from a huge expansion of the federal role in medical care?

The numbers already tell a horrifying story about the reckless expansion of government. In 1951, despite the bloody and costly burdens of the Korean War, spending for federal, state and local governments consumed 22.38% of the total American economy, as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This year (2009) government at all levels will spend at least 45% of every dollar American individuals and industries manage to earn an all-time record for peacetime, approaching the 52.97% that governments used in 1945 at the very height of World War II. To put the current number in perspective, Lyndon Johnson drew near universal condemnation for his irresponsible guns and butter budget of 1968, with bloated government programs to back his Great Society schemes at the same time we supported more than a half-million fighting men in Vietnam. LBJs spending (which helped cost him the presidency) never exceeded 30.46% of GDP; Obamas, at an estimated 45.19% this year (without Obamacare!) is some 50% higher!

How has the public gained from this appalling increase? What aspects of our lives have improved due to expensive new government programs since 1951, or even 1968? In other words, what have we bought with all the trillions and trillions of increased spending?

Before attempting to answer that question, its important to clear away two lies frequently used by liberals to confuse the public on this all-important issue.

DEMOCRATIC LIE NUMBER ONE

The first lie suggests that the chief reason for higher governmental spending involves vast increases in money for defense, wars, foreign aid and other programs related to national security.

In fact, this security spending hasnt gone up at all as a share of the national economy its actually decreased sharply in recent decades and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan brought only relatively minor increases. In 1951, with overall government spending less than half what it is today, the defense budget was nearly twice its 2009 level. (9% to 4.7%). In other words, military spending as a percentage of all governmental spending is today only one-fourth what it was sixty years ago.

In 1968, due to Vietnam, military spending rose to 9.8%. That number (of defense spending as a percentage of GDP) came down after the conclusion of the war in Southeast Asia, and sank to a modern low of 3% under Bill Clintona level criticized by many military planners as irresponsibly low. Defense spending has increased steadily since then (to an estimated 4.7% this year) under the pressures of the War on Terror. The defense budget nevertheless remains historically low far below its levels under Eisenhower, say, or Kennedy, or Reagan (6%). In explaining the outrageous increase in federal, state and local spending, its obvious that defense and international entanglements had nothing to do with it.

The main cause for the doubling of governmental expenditures involves three areas of inexorable expansion: entitlements, social programs and bureaucracy. Since Obama care would bring dramatic additional growth in all three areas, its important to consider the way that previous boosts for relevant federal, state and local budgets utterly failed in improving governmental efficiency or effectiveness. If theres a single governmental program that has steadily improved over the last sixty years (while budgets steadily enlarged) I cant think of it. Public education offers an especially dispiriting example, with per-pupil spending nearly tripling and relative performance showing either alarming declines or a disappointing lack of positive results.

DEMOCRATIC LIE NUMBER TWO Continued...