Posted on 09/03/2004 10:09:26 PM PDT by Belisaurius
Watching President Bush’s speech on Wednesday, and the GOP reaction, was one of the most disturbing political experiences I’ve ever had.
Bush’s convention speech had everything that should raise red flags for those concerned about the decline of liberty in this country. The president’s words had the worst of everything in American politics. He seemed to be trying to appeal to everyone whose main political goal is to see the government expand in one way or another. Looking at different elements in his speech, you can see how Bush is reaching out to conservatives, moderates, liberals and even some libertarians in order to be reelected. He did this by being all kinds of politicians at once. Taken together, the Bush program is a frightening one
(Excerpt) Read more at lewrockwell.com ...
There are fewer of them to watch.
They may lose the presidential race, but they are dead right about this issue. Bush has grown non defense spending by 37.5% since taking office...and all of these ridiculous new entitlement programs he is bragging about are enough to make true conservatives gag. If Clinton/Gore had made the same spending promises made by Bush, you can bet every Freeper would be outraged.
I agree. Most disturbing? Indeed! How about anything that Algore said? How about anything that Kerry says. This guy's on drugs.
What I'm really bored with is the constant polling data presented by the media. Visit www.lietothepollsters.com to register your choice to lie to pollsters when they call. Who knows, if enough of us do it, we might just be free of this stuff until the ultimate poll, Election Day!
www.lietothepollsters.com
So Bush is interested in restraining federal spending - surprising being that discretionary spending under the first three years of his results-oriented presidency increased a stunning 37.5%. Later on in his speech, Bush moved on to criticize his opponent for proposing $2 trillion in federal spending over his two decade career as a Senator:
Bush, as the results-oriented president he is, also reminded us that "Two months from today, voters will make a choice based on the records we have built." Let's take a fair look at the new federal spending Bush proposed during the most recent full calendar year, 2003. We'll be magnanimously fair by only using the White House's own website as a source for our information. In his 2004 budget presented to Congress in February 2003, Bush called for the following new federal spending:
* $450 billion to strengthen and improve Medicare
* $15 billion increase in defense spending
* $2.5 billion increase for Homeland Security
* $2.8 billion increase in education spending
* $1.7 billion for the hydrogen fuel initiative and FreedomCAR programs
* $600 million initiative to help addicted Americans
* $450 million for mentors for disadvantaged students and children of prisoners
* $150 million increase to accelerate Superfund cleanup
Now, I'm not insinuating that this proposed spending by a president from Texas is any worse or better than proposals by a "senator from Massachusetts," rather, I'm just stating plain fact: The total proposed so far is $473.2 billion. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush also called for $15 billion in UN support for the global effort to combat HIV/AIDS.
This puts it up to $494.2 billion in new federal spending proposals from Bush in 2003 ALONE.
An additional $90.9 billion in emergency appropriations and supplementals was requested in 2003, bringing Bush's "new federal spending" proposals in the single year of 2003 to $585.1 billion.
Perhaps some will see the above as unfair, because much of it is due to military action that Bush says he didn't want to take, but had to take, as well as increases in Homeland Security expenses. Subtracting the full $114.4 billion reflected in such proposals, we come up with $470.7 billion, "and that's a lot," even for a conservative president from Texas. If Bush had just one red letter year such as 2003 each four year term and proposed absolutely no new federal spending in the off years, he would have not just proposed over $2 trillion in new federal spending over the course of a career as long as John Kerry's. He actually accomplished it in less than 4 years! "He said he'd do it, and he did."
If we wish to be fair and use the figure of how much the Medicare bill will actually cost taxpayers, rather than what the White House said it would cost before Congress passed it (Government typically underestimates the cost of new entitlement programs by 200-300%), the amount of new spending proposed and passed by the end of Bush's first term amounts to over $3.5 trillion dollars.
"I thought our friends at Rockwell.com were more Constitution Party types then LPers...no?"
Actually, they have two core beliefs. First, that the government screws up everything it touches. Second, the government is only motivated by a desire to seize more power. While one can sympathize with that, they fail to address a core contridiction that is: "if the government screws everything up, then it will also fail in it's attempt to seize power."
The New Deal *is* a facist work. It's the stage between a free people and full born socialism. Too bad the GOP has embraced New Dealism, while the Dems have gone socialist. Neither are good choices.
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