I received an email this morning from my favorite trading and economics web source which I found most enlightening.  They had provided a series of charts about our economy which was originally published by The Heritage Foundation [Messrs. William Beach and Patrick Tyrrell] entitled 2012 Index of Dependence on Government.  Click here to read the full Heritage Foundation report, or here  [then scroll down] to see only the charts as they appeared in the email from Incredible Charts and Colin Twiggs.  Long form or short, the data clearly confirms Romney’s contention that America is rapidly becoming a nation of government dependents.

Upon visiting the Heritage Foundation site, I found one chart in particular to me most informative.  I then did a bit of additional digging to amplify the chart by adding data about which political party controlled both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives plus who the president was.  I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.  Here is the basic data form on party control of congress and seated president from 1945 to present in table form and then overlaid onto the Heritage Foundation chart.

The two periods of relatively more conservative public policy (the 1980s and 1995–2001) stand out clearly in [the chart above]. The slowdowns in spending increases during the Reagan years and after the 1994 congressional elections produced two periods of slightly negative change in the Index. These periods saw significant retreats from the Great Society goals [of the Johnson era], particularly in the nation’s approach to welfare, but the return of budget surpluses during the last years of the Clinton Administration led to significant spending increases for all of the components, particularly education and health care. The George W. Bush years saw more leaps in retirement, housing, health, and welfare spending, and since 2009, health care and welfare spending has blasted upward like a rocket on speed. Health care and welfare now stands at four and a half times the 1980 level (inflation-adjusted). With the implementation of Obamacare in 2012, the parameters of Chart 11 will most likely have to be expanded again to fit the higher Index number in the years to come.
Heritage Foundation - "2012 Index of Dependence on Government"

Traditional American freedoms or government dependence, the choice is ours in November.  Let’s hope we get it right!