Mr Thomas said, with fixed term parliaments planned, there was no reason not to push for limits on annualexpenditure at a national level - rather than simply in the run-up to an election.
The government has slashed expenditure to try to bring its annual deficit for 2006 down to the three and a half percent maximum of gross national product permitted under European Union rules.
It appears fair to say that an increase in total government size of ten percentage points in tax revenue or expenditure as a share of GDP is on average associated with an annual lower growth rate of between one-half and one percentage point.
Inflation, as measured by the core personal-consumption-expenditure deflator (excluding food and energy) fell to 0.7% at an annual rate in the third quarter, its lowest since 1962.