Tax Freedom Day v. Friedman Day

Deroy Murdock seems to have trouble with the spelling of Milton Friedman’s last name – oft typing it as if it were Freidman. But I like his chart that compares the Tax Foundation’s “days worked to pay for taxes” versus the graph that shows days worked to pay for government spending:

AIER’s Kerry Lynch wrote last April 15. Tax Freedom Day peaked on May 3, 2000, near the end of President Bill Clinton’s administration but before President G. W. Bush signed multiple tax cuts. Lynch added: “Friedman Day shows that it is not because the government is spending less, but because it is borrowing more, in the name of tomorrow’s taxpayers.”

Since 2000, government spending as a share of GDP has increased even as tax collections have declined. Murdock isn’t exactly correct in the following:

Up and up and up perfectly describes the path of federal spending, which constantly rises, as if gravity were reversed … Republicans are supposed to squelch such rubbish. And yet 100 House Republicans approved it. GOP voters, already disgusted by Republican profligacy, will find this betrayal of their party’s core principles enervating. Democratic voters will back their party’s genetic big spenders, rather than the GOP’s hypocritical posers.

We did see a drop in government spending relative to GDP from 1992 to 2000 – and this came under a Democratic Administration. Odd isn’t since Murdock thinks Democrats are just big spenders.