George Bush is a bigger spender than LBJ.

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.

Without including entitlements Bush is worse than LBJ.  Yikes.  But Bush made that problem worse as well.

Then there was the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit — the biggest single expansion in the program’s history — whose 10-year costs are estimated at more than $700 billion. 

I know that most Republicans still pledge loyalty to W, but face it - the man is not a conservative.  Blame Congress for reckless spending all you want, but Bush was the enabler who could have put the kibosh on it at any time.  But he wasn’t merely complicit, he was an active part of the problem.

Related content:

This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Government Waste. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.