Falling Government Investment Casts Doubt on Pie-in-the-Sky Growth Estimates

•  The budget proposals being prepared by the Office of Management and Budget incorporate revenue estimates based on GDP growth rates of 3 percent or more.
• The proposals include across-the-board decreases in nondefense discretionary spending
• Such cuts will make it difficult to reverse the long decline in government investment, casting doubt on the likelihood of achieving ambitious growth estimates.

Government investment at all levels accounts for only about 15 percent of gross fixed investment in the United States, but its economic significance is greater than that modest share suggests. Government investment affects investors in private industry in several ways through its impacts on growth of the economy as a whole, on suppliers of construction services and materials for government investment projects, and on users of government infrastructure. Negative trends in government investment raise concerns for all of these reasons.

Three charts reveal the extent of these negative trends. The first chart takes a long-term look at gross investment in fixed assets at all levels of government. It shows that total government investment has fallen by about half since the 1960s. Investment at the federal level and at the state and local levels contribute roughly equal shares of the total, but the federal share has fallen more rapidly. Federal gross investment in fixed assets as a share of GDP in 2015 was just a third of its 1961 peak value. >>>

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