Posted on 04/16/2002 3:27:45 AM PDT by 2Trievers
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PRESIDENT BUSH sure talked a lot during the 2000 campaign about fiscal restraint. He even argued last year that his proposed tax reductions would shrink the federal government by starving it of funds. But Bush’s own 2002-2003 budget rivals Lyndon Johnson’s in its profligacy.
A Washington Post analysis yesterday showed that, if Bush gets his way, he will have presided over the largest percentage increase in federal spending since President Johnson simultaneously waged the War on Poverty and the war in Vietnam.
In the four years from 1999 to 2003, federal spending will have increased an eye-popping 22 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. That will boost the federal government’s share of America’s gross domestic product by 1.9 percentage points — from 16.6 percent to 18.5 percent. Some of the increases were implemented on President Clinton’s watch. But Bush bears most of the blame as he has attempted to fully fund the war on terror while increasing federal non-defense spending.
Like Johnson, Bush is trying to expand federal involvement into realms of American life in which it previously did little while at the same time increasing military spending. Though the administration argues that the defense spending will subside after 2003, that is not at all clear. The War on Terror could go on for years. And Bush’s expansion of the federal government in areas such as education is being pitched as permanent, which will require ever-increasing funds presumably forever.
What is scarier is that these increases come in Bush’s proposed budget, on which Congress has yet to get its spend-happy hands. The increase is likely to be even higher after the pork-meisters get through “adjusting” the Bush budget.
The President ought to remember that voter inability to distinguish him from Al Gore nearly cost him the 2000 election. If he wants to stay in office, he should be doing things to widen, not narrow, the gap between his supposedly fiscally responsible party and the Democrats.
"Like father, like son!" and that I heard from a Texas Republican, who added "Can't trust either of 'em!" and then her extrovert husband jumped in and really fried the air.
So who will make the most out of the rising disenchantment: Hillary, or the Perot/GoPatGo crowd rabid crowd?
Tim
Yeah. I know. I've come to the conclusion that the US political class and the US govt. are irreformable.
I voted for Bush because this is what I thought Gore would do. "W" is going to be a one termer.
A President who is making sure that the military is properly funded. That is where the majority of the increase is.
Oh well the Union-Leader can use that conservative icon, the Washington Post as their source, it is a free country after all.
But it still amazes me that even so-called "good' conservative papers such as the Union-Leader think the Washington Post's word is good as gold.
They are probably laughing thier arses off at the WP at how conservatives will take their stories hook, line, and sinker.
Criticize the messenger, avoid the message.
When the undefendable facts are presented, you all grab ahold of the lifeline, latest single positive action tossed out as crumbs to the "cake-eaters".
Many of us are pleased that G.I.'s are gaining a bit of support. But bush has Lied about all of the other items he was going to cut or eliminate. And you'll notice, for the most part folks are fed up with it.
Well of course they have; and they are the same people who would not stop screaming until the Feds took over airport security; but why go 'there'?
Of course, their rhetoric has little to do with truth; but only serves them when they succeed creating false perceptions in the minds of the public-at-large.
'People of the Lie'. . .
Source, please?
Funny -- I remember how Ronald Reagan was criticized by these same people. Budgets swelled under his administrations. Spending grew at an enormous rate, creating a deficits of billions of dollars a year and adding to the national debt, skyrocketing into the trillions. We'd never be able to get out from under that fiscal mess, went the puling cant of the conservative purists.
Like Reagan, Bush sees that one or two big things are about the limit a given president can tackle. For The Gipper, it was a) Soviet communism; and b) tax cuts for economic growth. For Dubya, it's a) the war on terrorism; and b) tax cuts for economic growth. The jury's still out on Bush, but I can see the FR kook brigades are ready to have him tarred and feathered for bringing back deficit spending and not "cutting big government."
Oh well, Bush can take solace that it's always the fate of the "man in the arena" to listen to the uninformed catcalls and silly whining of those who never had to actually do or implement anything in the real world, but are infallible experts at running the world from the comfort of an anonymous terminal logged into the internet. C'est la guerre!
How much debt is too much? Whether a given federal budget is too large or not is a matter of perception. Sure, the government wastes lots of money -- that's inherent when you're spending over $ 2 trillion per year.
Paying for the "privilege of being in debt"? How about "paying for the use of money you don't yet have" instead? And that's not a mortal sin, if the size of your economy is growing faster than your debt. That's basically what happened to the "crushing national debt" of the 1980's -- all those brilliant Nobel-prize-winning economists saw how the debt could be wiped out in a few years with massive economic growth.
Balancing the budget is less important that where we are and what we do as a nation. Geopolitical realities, ignored during the 1990's, have come home to roost with a vengeance and we have been recently reminded that the world is a dangerous, nasty place, filled with people who wish us no good. We are compelled to confront them and their challenge to us as a nation. Bush realizes that's more important than "cutting government." As Reagan saw back in the 1980's that defeating the Soviet Union was more important than "balancing the budget."
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