In the current fiscal year, it is planned that the U.S. Federal government will spend about $2.93 trillion. With a population approaching 305 million Americans, this means that Uncle Sam’s expenditures will represent a per capita federal burden on every man, woman and child of over $9,500. With an estimated 112.4 million households in the U.S., each household will bear a burden, on average, of about $26,700 (not counting the cost of state and local government).

Many of these expenses are due to the growth in government functions and responsibilities since the New Deal days of the 1930s and the Great Society programs introduced or expanded in the 1960s.

One way of understanding this growth in “big government” is to compare it with the duties of the Federal government, say, 140 years ago in 1868. That year The World Almanac was published for the first time. The entire federal government fit on just one page of the Almanac that year. There were only seven cabinet-level departments listed – Treasury, State, War, Navy, Interior, Attorney General, and Post Master General – with the rest of that page listing U.S ambassadors to foreign governments.

Suppose that today the federal government was limited to its size in that post-Civil War period of the 19th century. How much would Washington be spending and what would be its burden on the American people?

The total Federal government budget would be less than $1.5 trillion dollars, or only slightly more than 50 percent of what is actually planned as federal spending in the current 2008 fiscal year. The per capita fiscal burden on the American people would be only $4,750, and the average American household would have a government spending burden only of around $13,350.

Additionally, federal spending will make up about 20 percent of expected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008. If government expenditures were limited to 1868 federal responsiibilities, Washington would be only absorbing about 10.3 percent of GDP, leaving that many more goods and services in the hands of consumers and private investors.

Included in the total of the hypothetical budget are the government’s planned net interest payments on the existing federal debt. If the government had not run the year-after-year annual budget deficits that have accumulated this debt, the fiscal burden on the American people would be almost a quarter of a trillion dollars less.

What makes up most of the difference between actual federal planned spending in 2008 and the hypothetical budget if the government was still more closely limited to its original constitutional functions and responsibilities, as reflected in the size of government in 1868?

The answer, of course, is the modern welfare state. Even with America’s significant military and related commitments around the world, it has been the growth in redistributive and entitlement programs that today costs the American taxpayer so much of their hard-earned money.