The Republican promise of smaller, less-intrusive government is getting harder and harder to believe.(...)
For the latest, check out a report just released by the libertarian Cato Institute that tells a striking story about just how out-of-control spending has gotten under President Bush.
Cato finds that:
Bush has presided over the largest increase in federal spending since Lyndon Johnson.
Even excluding defense and homeland security spending, Bush is the biggest-spending president in 30 years.
The federal budget grew from 18.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product on President Bill Clinton’s last day in office to 20.3 percent at the end of Bush’s first term.
Add to that Bush’s massive Medicare prescription-drug benefit, expected to cost $720 billion-plus over the next 10 years. (The money for that new entitlement, the first created by a president in a generation, will start flowing this year.)
Bush may have cut taxes, but that’s not the same thing as shrinking government.
Now the 64 dollar question: Which Democratic primary candidate wanted to re-institute the budget rule that says that if you cut a tax you have to cut an equal amount of spending? Bonus question: Which year did the Republicans get rid of that rule?
The sad truth is that even Republicans are realizing what Democrats have always known: Don’t trust Republicans with your money. Democrats are the better budget hawks.
I think it does a really good job of explaining why social security is a good thing.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeasmymeasure
