Under Bush, spending soars
WASHINGTON - President Bush came to office saying he was a fiscal conservative, but federal spending has skyrocketed on his watch. And it’s not just the Pentagon that’s getting more federal dollars.
Overall spending is up at least 16 percent since he took office, far more than the 2 percent average annual inflation rate over the same period. According to one recent analysis, the government now spends $20,000 a year for every household in the United States, the most since World War II.
In the meantime, the $236 billion federal surplus Bush inherited in January 2001 has turned into a $374.2 billion deficit…
Even so, Bush’s record is a big disappointment to conservatives, who share his stated goal of a leaner federal government.
“President Bush has yet to meet a spending bill he doesn’t like,” the Wall Street Journal complained in a recent editorial denouncing what it called “the GOP’s spending spree.”
An analysis by the Cato Institute, a libertarian research center, branded Bush “the Mother of All Big Spenders” and compared him unfavorably to Clinton. By Cato’s accounting, after adjusting for inflation, nondefense spending decreased 0.7 percent during Clinton’s first three years in office while it increased nearly 21 percent during the comparable period under Bush.
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Bush’s record speaks for itself.
