You can say that, but then you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated. The drug war and medicare/social security (to take two other big programs) are good or bad for entirely separate reasons.
The fact is, when you say you want the government to be small, you are conflating things that there are different. There are different ways to be big or small, and they have different advantages and disadvantages.
> you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated
You're mistaken - they have much in common. In order to be a successful political party, what you have to do is find issues that (a) a lot of people deeply believe in on an emotional level and (b) can be addressed in such a way that you can redirect large sums of money into the pockets of 3rd parties in the process, who will then support the election campaigns of your politicians.
Whether this happens through providing obscenely overpriced healthcare to Americans or through buying/using drones to extrajudicially murder and terrorize Yemeni wedding-goers is just a detail. We could debate until the end of time how much value either of these initiatives actually provides to the American citizenry, but that's a completely separate issue (and not one that the vast majority of politicians give a rat's ass about).
The fact is, when you say you want the government to be small, you are conflating things that there are different. There are different ways to be big or small, and they have different advantages and disadvantages.