The Cato Institute's budget studies department has released a study that really nails Bush and the Republicans for their big spending ways. Here's the summary:
President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. His 2006 budget doesn't cut enough spending to change his place in history, either.Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush's first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton's last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush's first term.
The Republican Congress has enthusiastically assisted the budget bloat. Inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent.
The GOP was once effective at controlling nondefense spending. The final nondefense budgets under Clinton were a combined $57 billion smaller than what he proposed from 1996 to 2001. Under Bush, Congress passed budgets that spent a total of $91 billion more than the president requested for domestic programs. Bush signed every one of those bills during his first term. Even if Congress passes Bush's new budget exactly as proposed, not a single cabinet-level agency will be smaller than when Bush assumed office.
Republicans could reform the budget rules that stack the deck in favor of more spending. Unfortunately, senior House Republicans are fighting the changes. The GOP establishment in Washington today has become a defender of big government.
This is why I had to laugh when the White House released their proposed budget a few months ago and pronounced it an "austere budget" full of "deep spending cuts." The Democrats were more than happy to go along with this absurd lie because it allowed them to portray the Republicans as big bad Grinches who want to take away {fill in the blank} from poor defenseless widows, handicapped orphans and cute little kittens. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why our budget keeps growing at a staggering rate year after year after year - because both parties tell the same lie to their constituents. And because their constituents are clueless enough to believe it.
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Someone is going to have to hit me over the head with a big irony pipe to help me understand how Bush and the republicans can continue to paint democrats as big spenders. How can the red staters sustain such a gigantic disconnect between reality and the Bush/republican/talk radio fantasy?
Mark, it's simple: if Faux News doesn't say it, it's the "liberal media" and must be a bunch of lies!
Mark--The Democrats are big spenders. You can say "Hey, look at those big spenders!" point at the Democrats, and have people accurately, if not justifiably, upset.
As long as they don't look at what you're spending yourself, you won't get caught too. And if your opponents are busy vilifying you for cutting too many programs, nobody will ever look at your spending record.
But Belac, things like the national debt and federal spending have increased more under republican administrations than they have under democratic administrations in the last several decades (going back to around Ford, I think. I forget the exact extent.)
BOTH parties spend like drunken simian miscreants* when given the opportunity. The only difference is what they spend it on - I happen to dislike what the Republicans (typically) spend it on less than I dislike what the Democrats (typically) do.
What's really bad is when they both basically get together and decide to let each other just spend whatever they want on whatever they want, which has pretty much ben what's going on lately.
That's my biggest problem (on a fairly long list, actually) with W. He never met a spending increase he didn't like (or wouldn't agree to to get something else he liked). Ick.
I sure wish the Democrats had run Joe Lieberman instead of Kerry.
*yes, I ripped that off from Dilbert.