Michelle Bachmann epitomizes the dishonesty and / or ignorance behind the "big government" debate:
"And what we saw this Tuesday, once the president signed the health care bill at the 11th hour in the morning on Tuesday, that effected 51% government takeover of the private economy," Bachmann said on Wednesday, during an interview with North Dakota talk radio host Scott Hennen. "It is really quite sobering what has happened. From 100% of our economy was private prior to September of 2008, but as of Tuesday, the federal government has now taken ownership or control of 51% of the private economy."
This is just blatantly false. From 2004-2007, public spending in the United States averaged 36.7% of GDP (PDF, page 5). The OECD (wealthy, developed democracies) average for that timeframe was 43.6% (same source). The reforms that have been put into place over the past year are projected by usgovernmentspending.com to increase public spending as a percentage of GDP in the USA to an average of 44.4% from 2013-2015, a time period which will be post-stimulus, post-TARP and, hopefully, post-mass unemployment. This will effectively bring the USA in line with the OECD average (although that average has likely increased since 2007, both as a result of growth in public spending in the USA, and because other OECD countries likely experienced an increase as a result of the recession).
Breathless exaggeration from the likes of Michelle Bachmann and other conservatives make it sound as though the public sector was invented whole cloth over the past two years. The argument of "big government" versus "small government" is portrayed in grandiose terms, rather than the actual frame of the debate over a 35% public sector on the right and a 50% public sector on the left. Or, to put it a different way, over the right-wing arguing for a 35% socialism that leans a bit more toward the military industrial complex, and the left-wing arguing for a 50% socialism that leans on single-payer health insurance.
Here is a graph of post-WWII public spending in the United States:
Even American conservatives are plenty socialist (if lemon socialist). Public spending as a percentage of GDP under conservative governance from fiscal years 2004-2007 averaged 34.9% according to usgovernmentspending.com, and 36.7% according to the OECD. Their collective conniption over moving the needle by about 7-9%, and bringing us in line with other wealthy democracies, is one of the most dishonest and / or utterly ignorant aspects of our national political discourse.
We are all frakking socialists. The question is just to what degree, and what kind.
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