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The chart showing USG spending / GDP excludes transfer payments, which strikes me as misleading. Transfer payments have ballooned in the time period shown and are still transfers of cash out of the government's coffers. I'm not some sky-is-falling Federal debt doomsayer; borrowing has been cheap and we're not breaking a sweat to service the debt. Still, it's hardly controversial that the current trajectory is unsustainable in the not-so-long term of a few decades.

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Transfer payments are presumably excluded because GDP traditionally excludes transfer payments. Including something in the numerator, but not in the denominator, is a good way to get weird ratios. E.g. it would be possible (though it would not presently happen in the US) to have a spending:GDP ratio greater than one.

I do agree that it would be better to use some other denominator that does not have this problem, but it isn't a crazy decision to begin with.

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