Spending: a bipartisan love story: the truth about republicans, democrats, and growing government.

• Author: de Rugy, Veronique
• Position: Columns - Column

AS NOBEL PRIZE winner and freedom fighter Milton Friedman often reminded us, the true size of the government is measured by how much it spends rather than by how much we pay in taxes. As we enter Barack Obama's second term, a look at government spending patterns during the last few decades offers some relevant--and surprising--insights.

With the one clear exception of President Dwight Eisenhower, all Republican and Democratic administrations between 1945 and 2013 have increased spending from their predecessor's final fiscal year in office. (Fiscal years run from October 1 to the end of the following September, making presidential ownership tricky during transition years, though generally the federal government operates under the departing executive's budget.) What's more, during the last 30 years, Republican administrations have spent taxpayer money at a much faster rate than Democratic administrations. Even Obama has kept spending relatively flat compared to the likes of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

During his two terms in office the second President Bush increased total spending by 53 percent in real terms, compared to 12.5 percent under Bill Clinton and a 2 percent reduction so far under Obama (when giving his predecessor full credit for FY2009, as we do for all departing presidents in this exercise). Some say Bush had no choice but to expand military spending to combat terrorism at home and abroad. But he also increased nondefense spending and presided over the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation under LBJ.

And it's Republicans, not Democrats, who were almost entirely to blame for these 21st-century expansions, because during the first half of 2001 and all of the 2003-07 period the GOP maintained full control of both the White House and Congress. With Washington unified, the purported party of limited government increased total spending by more than 20 percent in real terms, an average of 5 percent a year.

The record of Ronald Reagan, that eloquent spokesman for limited government, doesn't look too great either. During his first term, the man who had said "it is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment" fattened the budget by 22 percent in real terms, including a 41 percent increase in defense.

In March the turncoat Republican economist Bruce Bartlett tweeted that "history books will say Obama was the 2nd most fiscally conservative president since Eisenhower (after Clinton)." He has an...