Definition
Cost of Government Day (COGD) is the date of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burden imposed by government at the federal, state and local levels.
Cost of Government Day 2009
Cost of Government Day for 2009 is August 12. On average, working people must toil 224 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government. In other words, the cost of government consumes 61.34 percent of national income.
Cost of Government Day: Trends
Cost of Government falls 26 days – almost a full month – later in 2009 than last year’s revised date of July 16. In 2009, the average American will have to work an additional 43 days out of the year to pay off his or her share of the cost of government compared to 2000, when COGD was June 29.
In fact, between 1977 and 2008, COGD has never fallen later than July 20th. This year even marks a sharp leap of 23 days from the previous record date, in 1982, when it fell on July 20th.
The driving factor for this development is that all components of the cost of government – federal spending, state and local spending, and regulations – are now increasing faster than national income, which shrunk as a result of the financial crisis in 2008. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), passed under the guise of economic “stimulus,” have enormously expanded federal spending. In conjunction with the FY 2010 Budget proposed by President Obama and passed by Congress, these spending bills set taxpayers up for a year when federal spending has reached a record 28.5 percent of GDP.
http://www.fiscalaccountability.org/...ntent=cog09-3#