Former President William Jefferson Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union Address announced that “the era of big government is over.” Federal expenditures for fiscal year 1996 were $1.5 trillion.

A President Donald Trump-backed continuing resolution to keep the government open after Oct. 1 projects annual federal spending for fiscal year 2025 at a staggering $7 trillion, a nearly 400% spike since Clinton’s “small government” policy 30 years earlier.

Rumors of the death of Leviathan government by Trump seem vastly exaggerated. True enough, Democrats crave even more lavish federal government spending. But that does not make Trump parsimonious. The latest budget bill on Trump’s watch jumped the national debt ceiling by another $5 trillion, which would have been superfluous if real government dow

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