Byron Dorgan: “The highest levels of spending relative to GDP occurred during the Reagan and Bush administrations. That had a lot to do…”

“The highest levels of spending relative to GDP occurred during the Reagan and Bush administrations. That had a lot to do with the size of the economy. As the economy has grown rather substantially, especially in the recent 8 years, what has happened is that Federal spending as a percentage of GDP actually decreased. I think it is important to talk about what has happened in recent years because people raise the question of the tax burden for middle-income taxpayers. As the chart shows, $39,000 is the average income. Federal income taxes, as a percentage, have actually decreased; the Federal income tax burden has decreased. There are a couple of other things I want to mention about our economy. In the last 8 years, the $290 billion deficit has gone, and now we have the biggest surplus in history. Eight years ago, economic growth averaged 2.8 percent for the previous decade. All of the leading economists in this country at that point said they expected we would have in the entire 1990s anemic, slow economic growth. In fact, they were all wrong. We have had economic growth averaging 3.9 percent annually since 1993. Job growth: 22 million new jobs since January 1993. The unemployment rate from 1981 to 1992 averaged 7.1 percent annually. Now it is at 4.1 percent--the lowest level in 30 years. Home ownership fell from 1981 to 1992, but the growth was the highest in history in the last 9 years. The Dow Jones was 3,300 in 1993, and it is now over 10,000.”