Final answer:
False. The U.S. government did not spend twice as much money between 1941 and 1945 as in its entire history.
Step-by-step explanation:
False. Although budget deficits were large in 2003 and 2004, and continued into the later 2000s, the federal government ran budget surpluses from 1998-2001.
By the mid-1930s, the federal government was borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars each year. One-third of the federal budget was spent on public employment projects and relief for the poor. At the same time, federal budget deficits still represented a relatively small percentage of the GDP (gross domestic product)-the total market value of all goods and services produced each year. Federal spending during the Depression was certainly greater than any peacetime period in the nation's history, but it still represented only a fraction of what the government spent during World War I. In addition, the US government would spend more in one year fighting World War II than was spent funding every New Deal program combined.
Although Franklin Roosevelt had already embraced the ideas of economist John Maynard Keynes on using deficit spending to jump-start the economy, the war wiped away any resistance among conservatives. Government spending during the four years of war doubled all federal spending in all of American history up to that point. The federal budget deficit soared, but, just as Keynes had predicted, the government's massive intervention annihilated unemployment and propelled growth. The economy that came out of the war looked nothing like the one that had begun it.