Big Spender Bush

The Tax Foundation has provided a neat little table summarizing the spendthrift ways of Geo. W. Bush, as opposed to Presidents Clinton, H.W. Bush, Reagan, and Carter.

Dubya leads the pack in "Average Annual Growth in Outlays during term in constant $2004"; he's upped spending, on average, 4.6 percent, easily outpacing his nearest competitors (Carter, at 4.1 percent, and Reagan, at 3.5 percent).

Update: I finally added the link.

Comments

[J]

Aaiiggghhh! There's no link in the text of this submission to H&R! I'm too busy wallowing in my own crapulence to go to Google! Help!!

[dlc]

Yup. What can you say at this point? Bush sucks...I give up....

[joe]

The "yeah, but" that always gets posted here is "but a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress would be even worse."

Carer's entire term. Clinton's first two years. Sorry, Charlie.

[Jason Ligon]

joe:

If it were just spending, I am almost convinced you are right. I can accept the deIn fact, I just returned a donation request from Bush with a letter indicating that I have no reason to believe that his administrations inclinations match mine as a fiscally conservative libertarian, and that until he does something to convince me otherwise, I am likely to vote for gridlock.

Alas, the right to self defense weighs very heavily for me. So heavily that 99% of Dems are completely off the table. This is painful.

[Jason Ligon]

Nice editing there, Jason ...

[Jason Ligon]

Here is the link, BTW:

http://www.taxfoundation.org/ff/FY2005perspective2.html

[joe]

Steve, government expenditures shouldn't grow along the same line as GDP, even in the mind of a liberal like me. If I add a big addition to my house, doubling its square footage, I don't buy a whole second boiler to heat it. I just add on to the existing heating system, at much lower cost. A lot of the cost of government is fixed, regardless of the size of GDP. If we were 10% richer, does that mean we'd need 10% more artillery pieces for the military to accomplish its missions?

[steve]

Joe: I hear ya on this. I like the GDP stat not as a pure measure (even though it is one) but as an indicator of priority and direction. It also gives a useful way to compare presidential budgets. Real dollars works too. It also helps prevent me from going insane when I look at how the total Outlays (in constant 2004 $$) have nearly doubled since Carter.

But your point is well taken. For example, experience and efficiency dictate that the War on Poverty should become less expensive during the time since its inception. If not we should just terminate it because it is, by definition, not working.

[Warren]

Yup. What can you say at this point? Bush sucks...I give up....

Don't give up. Keep saying it. Say it loud, say it frequently.

BUSH SUCKS, FUCK BUSH

I fucking swear, would Ralph Nader couldn't have fucked us over in four years.

(Yeash, that's way too many F bombs in one post. I'm better go get a danish, and some decaf. Decaf before 9, this day is not starting out well at all)

[dj of raleigh]

How do those percentages of growth compare
with the percentage of gross national product?

[dj of raleigh]

>It's a matter of making government exercise the same kind of financial responsibility that every American family does.
? President Ronald Reagan in 1982, discussing a proposed balanced budget amendment

[Alex]

Steve-

Your argument about evaluating government spending as a % of GDP is well taken, but the problem is that the statistic you use is REVENUE, not spending.
Clearly, the revenue percentage will go down due to short-term tax cuts, but when government spending increases creating a budget deficit it just pushes the ultimate burden for the excessives of the current generation into the future. If you think current tax and spending levels can exist, then you obviously buy into the concept of free money.
If you look at the percentage of government spending, the only fair statistic, a far more pessimistic tale is told.

[Overlord]

So, what else is new. Every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge has been a free spender, ever Reagan.

[Mark Fox]

Bush the Spender, The Thief of Rights, sucks. How would one of the other potentially-electable clowns be significantly better? Were those two years of Bubba really so wonderful?

They're all thoroughly objectionable. Perhaps we could have had (will have) a smaller budget, but with that would likely come a different package of intrusions and meddling, in all aspects of our lives.

None of these Esteemed Father Figures is leading us toward individual responsibility and a hands-off respect for the ability of people to solve their own problems.

[steve]

I long ago bought into the "percentage of GDP" method of evaluating Govt Revenues and Spending. The chart shows that revenues for this year (%GDP) are the lowest of all the samples. Thank you tax cuts! Outlays, at 19.9% are lower than Bush I, Regan, & Carter. CLINTON is the only one who spent less, as a % of GDP, than GWB!

Conclusion: Bill Clinton was the real fiscal conservative, GWB is not. Or maybe it was the fact that we had a Democrat in the White House and a Republican controller Congress?

[online bingo mom]

Yeah he totally sucks and so do Cheney and Rumsfeld. Lets not reelect them.

[Walker David]

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DATE: 05/20/2004 09:43:45
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