Government tab is paid off at last

Amid a campaign in which both major-party candidates are merrily promising more things the government is going to do for you and solemnly delineating the real and (mostly) imagined threats from which government is going to protect you, it might be useful to step back and develop a little perspective.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said last week that Wednesday, July 16, was Cost of Government Day. That is, the average American had to work until July 16 to pay their share of all the costs government imposes on us. This is the latest in the year that the day has fallen since 1992.

Spending and regulation together, then, consume 53.9 percent of national income.

It is not uncommon for people to complain or celebrate ironically about Tax Freedom Day, the day when we would (finally) be finished paying all our taxes to the national, state and local governments if government had taken every single bit of our income until that day. It usually falls sometime in May. But Norquist and his organization have refined the calculation a bit by including the extra costs the government imposes on us through regulations, price supports, tariffs and other interventions into the economy that reduce efficiency and cost us money.

Thus Americans for Tax Reform calculates that, at current levels, federal spending will cost us 83.7 days of the 365 days in a year, while state and local spending will cost us 50.5 days. Federal regulations, however, cost us 41.7 days a year, while state and local regulations cost 20.9 days, bringing the total to 196.8 days. And, as Norquist puts it, "the spending data is precise, the regulatory burdens are understated," which is almost certainly true.

As compared with when President Bush assumed office in 2001, federal spending consumes three more days of your life, while federal regulations (which had remained stable for the previous four years) take another full day. State and local spending consume another six days just since 2003.

Here's the kicker. The economy has grown by $2.9 trillion since 2003, and tax revenues have increased by $785 billion. But spending has grown much more sharply. "Had the federal government limited federal spending to grow only as rapidly as the economy since 2000, Norquist writes, "the budget would have been balanced by 2006 and in surplus today."

Can government that takes more than half the national income produced by productive and hard-working people be sustained much longer? We thought spending was too high in 2000.