Bush seemed to think he would be more popular with the voters if he spent more money. He was a “compassionate” conservative.
His tax cuts were great, but his spending habits were actually much worse than clinton’s.
And under his leadership both Republicans and Democrats voted to spend like drunken sailors, and ratcheted up their earmarks and pork.
He also made the grave mistake of sticking with folks like Greenspan and Paulson, who were all the time working for the Democrats and the corrupt plutocrats who blew leveraging and derivatives up to astronomical levels—about $600 trillion at last count.
So, he may have been a decent guy, but he hadn’t a clue about economic discipline. Sure, it was guys like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who supervised the stealing. But what was Bush doing all those years? Smiling—while they spent more, and more, and more.
it’s not the spending per se.
we could have built and repaired more roads and bridges and wired up the whole country for broadband. Those ideas would be good for the economy.
The problems were the toxic viral GSE’s, promotion of debt (so much for the ownership society), more pork and more regulations like Sarbanes Oxley.