Answer (and an update) below the fold.

The picture comes from this article in The Economist. Here's my response:

Sir--Your article on state budget difficulties is accompanied by a chart showing decreased state spending. Your label for the chart, Mini Herbert Hoovers, gives President Hoover too much credit for fiscal discipline. Hoover may well have been our first Keynesian president; immediately following the stock market crash he pushed for an increase of $423 million in a governement building program on the grounds that it would stimulate the economy. This program was not an isolated policy action as indicated by the increase in U.S. government spending from $2.961 billion in 1928 to $4.659 billion in 1932.

E. Frank Stephenson
Professor of Ecoonomics
Berry College
Rome, Georgia

Previous post--including link to spending data cited in the letter--here.

UPDATE: I'm not at all sympathetic to the teeth gnashing that coming year "revenues will still be meagre." Take a peek at the chart again--the decrease in spending over the last year or two is "meagre" compared to the growth over the previous years. For the better part of the past two decades--excepting the 2001 recession--state spending has grown faster than population growth plus inflation. Spending growth of 8%+ in 2005-2007 was probably double population growth plus inflation. Cry me a river about "meagre" revenue.