Per Capita Growth In Government Spending

Economist Mark Thoma has an interesting post today on his blog. He has done an analysis of real per capita growth in government spending under every president since Lyndon Johnson.

It turns out that the most austere was Bill Clinton and next most austere is Barack Obama. Spending growth was less under Jimmy Carter than it was under Nixon-Ford or under Reagan. Here is Thoma's graph:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e2016763df2c09970b-popup