The data you point to shows government spending as a share of GDP peaking in FY 2009, dropping through FY 2014, rising slighting to FY 2016, and with a projected sharp bend upward beginning in FY 2018.
The only recent period of a significant runup in government spending (federal or overall) as a percent of GDP was approximately the second term of the most recent Bush Administration, and the only periods with any sustained growth in that measure since the 1970s are about from the middle of the Carter Administration through Reagan's first term and then again both terms of the second Bush Administration (as noted, with a particularly rapid rise in the second term.) Even with the projected increase in the out years, the projected 2020 spending level as a percent GDP isn't that much ahead of 1970.
The growth from 30 to 35% 1970 to present is enormous. People often point to the 1950's as the good old economic days, and the percentage was much lower then, as well.
More important than that, though, is that the USA was one of the few highly industrialized nations in the world which did not have its factories bombed out less than a decade before.
The only recent period of a significant runup in government spending (federal or overall) as a percent of GDP was approximately the second term of the most recent Bush Administration, and the only periods with any sustained growth in that measure since the 1970s are about from the middle of the Carter Administration through Reagan's first term and then again both terms of the second Bush Administration (as noted, with a particularly rapid rise in the second term.) Even with the projected increase in the out years, the projected 2020 spending level as a percent GDP isn't that much ahead of 1970.