17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
"Central government spending had soared from less than 2 percent of the economy's total output to well over 20 percent in 1865, approximately what the central government spends today. "It is hard to decide from which angle that statistic is more astonishing: that government spending rose from such infinitesimal lows to today's heights in four years, or that today federal authorities regularly spend during peacetime as much as they did during the country's most devastating war." -- Jeffrey Rogers Hummel