Center for Social Research

How big is government? Visualizing U.S. government expenses

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Given the pending $940 billion health care reform bill in the U.S. Congress, along with the $787 billion economic stimulus bill enacted in 2009, there is a lot of public controversy about the scope of public spending in the U.S. Just how unusual is the Obama administration's spending, and why? As shown in the static image above, it is clear that the Obama administration's 2009 spending dwarfs prior years and reaches for a 48-year maximum near 35% of non-government GDP before offsets. But this fact is not alone--it also represents the summation of trends long in the making. Whatever you think, the interactive visualization below may help to put the spending surge in its proper context. For example, before 2009 the record holder appears to have been the Reagan Administration in 1983, with nearly 30% of non-governmental GDP before offsets. Recessions take a toll on the economy that drives up the government's share.

At CSR, we are learning to use a powerful new tool called Tableau, a data visualization and analysis application that is evolving from origins in business intelligence. With the recent release of version 5.1, Tableau now includes Tableau Public, a free service that allows anyone to create and post interactive visualizations like the one below. Tableau is sponsoring a contest through March 26, and our interactive entry is below--please read on.

To create this visualization, I began with the data in the Excel workbook provided for the contest by Tableau. The data includes two worksheets:  a table with one row per year including national GDP and inflation numbers for 1962-2009 (48 rows), and a table with one row per year per federal department or unit (1,680 rows) including spending, president’s name and party. Tableau’s multiple tables capability allowed me to join these two tables by year to instantly merge the GDP figures into each department’s year row. Thirty-five departments are too many to visualize easily, so I grouped them into ad-hoc categories of interest to me. For example, I combined State, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, International Aid and Veterans Affairs into a single “Security, Diplomacy and Law Enforcement” category. The departments in each grouping appear in the next section “Breakdown by Agency”, or see this supporting table for details on which departments are in which group.

I also created a calculated field that divides the departmental spending into the sum of that year’s GDP less the total spending for that year so that the spending rate denominator is the non-governmental share of the economy (otherwise, the rate is attenuated, since government spending is a component of GDP).

As usual, data integrity is a top priority. In checking the data, I found that Tableau’s GDP table was missing a row for 1964 and all the inflation values were out of place by a year too early from 1965 to 2008 (compare to this table).

The visualization below is a “dashboard.” Change the top left drop-down menu to filter the entire visualization to show spending for a specific group of departments; move the top right sliders to select a subset of the available years. Check or uncheck selected presidents at right of the chart to include or exclude administrations. The default is set to show all years and administrations for the “Security ...” department group. The charts illustrate just how big the post-Cold War “peace dividend” was (dropping by 4.6% of GDP between 1986 and 1998) and how increased spending since 9/11 has moved back toward the 48-year average of 8.4%, with the Obama administration’s 2009 spending coming in at 8.5%. (Hover the mouse over any circle marker to see a popup with the data values). The lower bar chart of change in GDP by year provides context showing that the 2009 increase in security spending reflects nearly flat GDP growth after inflation. The table at the bottom reveals that Lyndon Johnson’s administration topped the charts in 1968 at a whopping 12.9% of non-governmental GDP.

 

Change to “Health and Human Services,” and you’ll see that government spending on health care has been steadily rising as a share of GDP since the beginning of the George W. Bush administration.

Spending on health care rose steadily from 1962 to 1982, held steady for most of the Reagan administration, soared under George H.W. Bush, climbed and then sank under Bill Clinton, then soared again under George W. Bush. Even before the new reform bill, Obama’s HHS spending tops the charts at 7.4%, but would fit on the Bush administration’s trend line if not for the recession’s potent hit to GDP.

Take a little time to browse the various categories; there are some surprises. Look for more Tableau visualizations from CSR in the future using our own in-house data and that of our clients. We welcome your comments!

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