Austerity reduced fourth quarter growth, I have heard.

So says Bill McBride. How can we verify his statement? He says fourth quarter real growth should be closer to 4.2% if government had not reduced its expenditures. Lets start with the blue line, real growth. Note this graph does not include the third quarter (4.1%) of the fourth (3.2%) . The graph reports that 4% growth is consistent with a federal budget that is 21% of GDP.
CNN Money looked and reported:

The federal government's latest annual deficit is the smallest it's been since 2008, according to Treasury Department data released Wednesday. At $680 billion, the fiscal 2013 deficit is 51% less than it was in 2009, when it hit a record high nominally of $1.4 trillion.

As a percent of the economy, it's also considerably smaller than it's been in the past five years, coming in at 4.1% of gross domestic product. By contrast, the annual deficit in 2009 topped 10% of GDP. And last year it was 6.8%.
Overall, Treasury said higher receipts accounted for 79% of the decline in the deficit from last year.


Several factors have contributed to the strong improvement in the nation's near-term fiscal picture. They include an improving economy and a mix of fiscal restraint -- primarily, the expiration of stimulus measures, the imposition of across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester, and tax increases on high-income households during the 2013 fiscal year, which ended September 30.
Another boon was the fact that Fannie Mae (FNMA, Fortune 500) and Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500) paid back a large part of the $187 billion federal bailout the mortgage giants received, starting in 2008, to help them weather the housing crisis.
In addition, total interest payments -- $415.6 billion -- were moderate relative to the amount of outstanding debt and GDP, but were nearly 16% higher than in 2012.

So if we add in these decreases directly then we get Bills's missing .98% of growth.  He could certainly be right. We are approaching a more normal federal budget and we would expect multiplier to be a little closer to 1.0. The key to watch is interest expense, jumping by 16% in the budget, and likely to jump to 25% another 2014. Lets look at interest expense as a percent of the budget:

This does not include the third or fourth quarter, and the number is now near 12%. That number should go above  16%, as we have nearly twice the debt to service.