People say this as a gotcha but it's really not, "small government" has always just been a euphemism for austerity and anti-welfare politics. It's like "family

People say this as a gotcha but it's really not, "small government" has always just been a euphemism for austerity and anti-welfare politics. It's like "family values" or "states rights", you're not really going to get anywhere useful by taking these euphemisms at face value.