The Daily Background

After his veto of the SCHIP children’s health care bill, President Bush has been described by some conservatives (skeptically) as a “recent convert to fiscal discipline.” And there’s plenty of reason for skepticism, as McClatchy points out:

George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he’s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.
[…]
Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors.

When adjusted for inflation, discretionary spending — or budget items that Congress and the president can control, including defense and domestic programs, but not entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare — shot up at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent during Bush’s first six years, Slivinski calculates.

That tops the 4.6 percent annual rate Johnson logged during his 1963-69 presidency. By these standards, Ronald Reagan was a tightwad; discretionary spending grew by only 1.9 percent a year on his watch.

The metrics of spending go on and on: discretionary, non-discretionary, defense spending, and so forth. Naturally taxes will have to be raised someday, but not on Bush’s watch if he can help it. Such an unbearably irresponsible way to run government. But of course it’s not just him– GOP-controlled Congress over the past 6 years has been just as responsible.

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