Boy I wish I had come up with that title. But I didn’t. It comes from the Cato Institute’s report The Grand Old Spending Party. This report is absolutely devastating to the current Republican leadership of this county because it demonstrates one fact very clearly. The Republicans can no longer claim the mantel of fiscal conservatism; they spend in a manner far worse than those “tax and spend” Democrats.
Just to really illustrate the difference between these parties – and to really tick off Republicans – let’s compare Bush to Clinton.
Budget as a Percentage of GDP
At the beginning of Clinton’s term, the Federal Budget was almost 22.5% of GDP. By the time he left office, that percentage was a little under 18.5% — a net decrease of 4%.
At the beginning of Bush’s first term, the Federal Budget was a little under 18.5% of GDP. Currently, that percentage was a little under 20.3% — a net increase almost 2%.
Growth Rate of Government Outlays
Under Clinton, the real annual growth rate of total government outlays was 1.5%.
Under Bush, the rea
l annual growth rate of total government outlays is 5%.
Growth Rate of Non-Defense Spending
Under Clinton, the real annual growth rate of non-defense and non-homeland security spending was 2.1%.
Under Bush, the real annual growth rate of non-defense and non-homeland security spending was 4.8% — over twice Clinton’s increase.
The result of this Republican spending spree is a ballooning of the Federal Deficit. When Bush was elected, the total federal deficit was 5.8 trillion. Now it is nearly 8 trillion – an increase of 38%.
The Cato Institute is not the only Republican organization to begin chaffing at the bit over Republican spending. From Fareed Zakaria’s Leaders Who Won’t Choose
Whatever his other accomplishments, Bush will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history. Since 2001, government spending has gone up from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, a 33 percent rise in four years! Defense and Homeland Security are not the only culprits. Domestic spending is actually up 36 percent in the same period….”throughout the past 40 years, most presidents have cut or restrained lower-priority spending to make room for higher-priority spending. What is driving George W. Bush’s budget bloat is a reversal of that trend.” To govern is to choose. And Bush has decided not to choose. He wants guns and butter and tax cuts.
It also appears Republicans are starting to distance themselves from Bush’s spending recklessness (which they enabled and egged on):
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said there is a need for dramatic spending cuts in “big-ticket items.”
“We haven’t been disciplined enough over the last 10 years. We need to do that, and we needed to do that before Katrina. We still need to do that over the medium and long term,” Vitter said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said an across-the-board cut in spending, excluding defense spending, would be appropriate.
“We’re failing when it comes to controlling spending,” Graham told “Fox News Sunday.”
Republicans are now the party of fiscal irresponsibility. How can they go to the voters and now claim they’ve seen the light? Their previous actions – especially when compared to the fiscally responsible Clinton – speak louder than their words. They spend recklessly, passing the bill to our children.
And for the least useful results:
Granted that LBJ kept us in a terrible, pointless war. However, did LBJ do any of these other things that Bush has done?
and those are good points.
This is more about appealing to Republicans than Democrats. There are a lot of disaffected fiscally responsible Republicans out there who remember that for all his faults, Clinton balanced budgets. That’s a huge deal with some people (myself included).
LBJ is the kill of death for many older Republicans. To associate Bush with LBJ is the literal kiss of death.
I see your point, and I agree. We won’t be able to help people who desperately need it if we are doing deficit spending like mad. That is pure insanity. However, I’m not sure a lot of those disaffected Repubs are reading this blog!
Maybe they are – my mother is one of them – she’s even a registered Dem now, but she didn’t vote for Clinton the second time, and she didn’t vote for Kerry or Gore. (She’s not fond of Bush, either, but feels caught with no one to vote for.)
I didn’t know you were posting over at BOP news ,Bonddad.
Nice work,as usual.
But then, I’m a little slow.
After much thought, I’ve come to a simple explanation for all the apparent insanity of the Bush presidency. He’s a thief.
He, and all his cronies, it turns out, are mainly interested in only one thing: how much money they can take out of the till. Even the Iraq war, with all the blather they’ve spewed about WMD (which they knew even then was just a fantasy) to instituting democracy (as if they believed in the ideals of democracy), turns out to have mainly resulting in increasing the price of oil. Especially Saudi oil. And the “reconstruction” funds spent there mainly end up in the pockets of Halliburton and other friends of Bush and Cheney.
New Orleans won’t turn out much differently. Oh, they will make some progress cleaning things up, and there may be some urban renewal projects, but mainly, the $200 billion will end up in the pockets of Bush cronies.
And the tax cuts for the wealthy will continue.
That’s why I’ve come to believe that the Dem’s ought to start loudly proclaiming a policy of tax cuts for the middle class. Or even “no taxes” for the middle class, or working class either. The rich won’t pay their fair share — the rest of us should refuse to pay ours either, at least on a Federal level. The result would be a pretty substantial inflation, I suppose, since that would be the only way out of the box, but that might just be the price we have to pay to get our country back.