Update below

Remember all the talk a few years back about how we wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of 1937, when FDR pulled back too soon on support for the economy? Here, from FRED, is the rate of change of real government spending per capita (federal, state, and local):

Gosh, I wonder why the economy is underperforming?

Update: Actually, a bit of a longer perspective may be useful. Here’s the same number calculated directly from FRED, using rates of growth: Government current expenditures – GDP deflator (the right measure of inflation) – Growth in civilian noninstitutional population; I’ve left out the immediate post -WWII years because they would spread the scale so much that recent stuff becomes invisible:

So we haven’t seen spending cuts like this since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.