Washington's Dead Donkeys (Out Of Control Spending And Lies By Republicans)

Bush Budget: Don't Break Open the Champagne

A cursory inspection reveals that the president is engaged in an overspending frenzy that continues to reward programs that should be abolished.
Government spending is President Bush's Achilles's Heel. In his first two years in office, he signed a bloated education bill and a subsidy-laden farm bill. Also, numbers show that in the first three years, this administration will have increased government spending by 13.5 percent, making this administration more profligate than the Clinton administration.
The president's defenders argue that everything must take a back seat to the war on terror, implying that increased spending is mainly the result of defense outlays. Yet the data show that spending has increased in all areas. According to Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute, over the first three years non-defense discretionary outlays will rise 18 percent and this number far exceeds the spending increases during the first three years of the last 6 administrations. And it pales in comparison to Ronald Reagan. President Reagan restored America's military during his two terms, boosting defense outlays by 19.2 percent in the first term and 10.4 percent in the second. But Reagan also reduced non-defense outlays, cutting domestic spending by 13.5 percent in the first term and 3.2 percent in the second. That is real budget discipline.
Even worse, President Bush is spending more than Bill Clinton.

Whatever happened to the GOP's crusade against bloated government? President Bush's $2.25 trillion budget released Monday is almost 30 percent larger than the budget he inherited three years ago. Since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, the budget has grown by 50 percent. If the Republicans are fighting a war against big spenders, the big spenders are winning.
If history is any guide, the 4 percent increase in spending is likely to be a floor, not a ceiling on expenditures this year. In recent years, congressional appropriators have nearly doubled President Bush's spending requests. Consequently, the discretionary budget has grown by nearly 15 percent in Mr. Bush's first two years in office — more than it did in President Clinton's first four years in office. In fact, Mr. Bush is on a pace to be the biggest spender in the White House since Lyndon Baines Johnson.
It's not just Democrat obstructionism — in fact, discretionary spending has, after an initial decline, rapidly expanding since Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. In their first three budgets (fiscal 1996-98), the Republicans increased domestic spending by $183 billion compared to a $155 billion increase in the three years prior to Republican control of Congress. Not a single Cabinet agency has been eliminated.
Spending also is growing faster than the economy, as the Table shows. We are now back to Uncle Sam pick pocketing 20 cents of every dollar we earn. That does not include the money that states and cities take from our paychecks.
Mr. Bush can reverse the spending spree that has stained his presidency and defend his spending priorities by starting to make aggressive use of the veto pen. Virtually every spending bill Congress has sent to his desk over the past two years has deserved a veto stamp. Powerful presidents like Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt used the veto to great end to force their spending priorities on Congress. As Mr. Reagan said, "Controlling government spending is like protecting your virtue; you just have to learn to say 'no.' "

Socialism won the 2000 election

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