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Michael Hodges has done a great job in his Report on International Spending, which is just one chapter in his on-line collection of hard, cold economic FACTS. By stepping back to see things from the long view, he has exposed the major trends, making the cute little dances and smoke-and-mirror shows of the politicians meaningless.
"...all major industrialized national world economies are significantly (5-10 times) more government-spending-dependent than ever before in their peace-time history - - and that increase is almost entirely social entitlement spending."
"It is the contention of this author that the freedom of individuals, and of their economic opportunity and security, is reduced in proportion to the rise in government-spending dependence of their nation."
Those quotes are from Mr. Hodges. Note that this page was last updated over 2 years ago and the chart above doesn't show the increase from Bush's last two years, nor the horrendus increase of Obama's first 9 months.
(Take a quick glance at the chart and tell me which decade the progressives started having their way.)
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...if America today could operate fully secure from a national security standpoint with today's defense spending ratio (about 5% of national income...) and without social [spending], then today's federal government total spending would be but 10% of the economy's national income instead of 150% higher at 26% of the economy. That would amount to federal spending of about $1.1 trillion, instead of today's spending total of $2.8 Trillion, a cut of $1.7 trillion equivalent to $5,686 per man, woman and child. 
