[A.Hun]

Spending on the federal level under Bush (2008 excepted) was about the same % of GDP that it has been for years.

When you consider the recession of 2000, the Enron and Worldcom bankruptcies, the attacks of 9/11, the unusual number of natural disasters including Katrina, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan....the case is easily made that spending was restrained under GWB.

IIRC, through 2007, the Congress exceeded his budget request every year.

[TigersEye]

That does make a case that Bush’s spending was less than typical. Typical being ridiculous since at least the mid ‘60s. It was still socialist entitlement programs that the Fed gov has no business in.