[sinkspur]

And with the drunken sailor we have in charge now, that number has swollen to 16.3% for FY2004, the highest it has ever been.

No money for homeland security, huh?

Leave out the homeland security money, and Bush's spending has been going DOWN.

[CGTRWK]

When you say non-defense spending, does that include Homeland Security? We're also fighting a different kind of war at home, these days.

Homeland Security spending falls under non-defense spending in the Tax Foundation's numbers, which are my source.

The FY2004 Homeland Security budget is somewhere between 31.3 and 37.4 billion federal dollars.

If you want to call this defense related spending, that leaves federal non defense related spending at 15.9% of the GDP which is still the highest it has ever been.

Leave out the homeland security money, and Bush's spending has been going DOWN.

Largest farm subsidy bill ever. Largest energy subsidy bill ever. Largest education bill ever, written by Ted Kennedy. Largest new entitlement program since 1965. Largest AIDS spending bill ever.

The only federal departments that have reduced budgets in FY2004 relative to the last year of Clinton's budget are the Army Corps of Engineers (-600M) and the Dept of Transportation (-400M).

Spending increases: 366 billion dollars a year and climbing.

Spending cuts: 1 billion dollars a year and shrinking.

The numbers are right there on the whitehouse.gov site for anyone to look at. Page 79.