I think he was talking about the growth of the government.
In 1965, as the debate about spending on Vietnam versus new entitlements was gaining traction, I watched Lyndon Johnson go on television and say that America was big enough and prosperous enough to handle full scale spending on both guns and butter. We could handle a major expansion of the national debt. And we could do it all without major inflation.
Well, we all saw what happened. Johnson's decision played a key role in the double-digit inflation of the Seventies when Lyndon's vultures came home to roost.