Glenn Beck today said that President Obama was “as fiscally responsible as a real housewife of Orange County at a Louis Vuitton sample sale.” As evidence, Beck produced a chart of FDR's presidential spending as a percentage of GDP, claiming “the highest, if you see, in 1941, you might remember that date because it's supposed to live in infamy, 1941, 12 percent of GDP.” Beck compared that figure to estimates from Obama's 2011 budget proposal: “Here's the lowest at 22.8 percent.”

Beck then warned his viewers that this level of spending might lead to an all-out collapse of the American economy:

BECK: May I ask, how is this sustainable? Forget sustainable, how is this even sensible? How is this not suicidal for our country? How is this not going to turn us into, I don't know, Greece?

The only problem is that the U.S. Government Printing Office keeps track of these kinds of things.

What, then, are we to make of the budgets of fiscal conservative idol Ronald Reagan? See, federal spending during the Reagan administration never fell below 20 percent of GDP and peaked at 23.5 percent in 1983. Will Beck now attack Reagan's pursuit of fiscal policies that were “suicidal” for America?