It's these damned education/grant proposals, medicare "reform," and others programs Bush has created.
With his State of the Union Address, President Bush has once again demonstrated a foolish willingness to indulge the culture of entitlement. He can’t veto the pork-laden spending bill currently before the Senate, but he positively promises to veto any attempt to undo his massive new prescription drug entitlement. He promises new funds for drug testing, job training, and half a dozen other initiatives, and sets a ridiculously low standard for the budget: “We will cut the deficit in half over the next five years.” (“Vote Bush: Only a quarter-trillion dollar deficit by 2008!”)
Is it any wonder that NBC News Wall Street Journal poll from last month shows Republicans have lost their advantage with voters on the issue of controlling spending?
...President Bush...responds to Democrats’ provocations with concessions and new wasteful social programs that they could have hardly dreamed up themselves: Now we’re buying people’s drugs for them, making payments on their houses, subsidizing teachers’ unions with massive education spending, and we may soon pay college tuition for illegal aliens, and send Social Security checks to Mexico as well.
Ronald Reagan had a hostile Congress, and even he did better to keep spending down than this president.
Last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal reported that, on average, Bush has increased domestic discretionary spending by 8.2 percent annually, putting Lyndon Johnson’s 4.3 percent average to shame. Remember, this isn’t war-on-terror spending—it’s “let’s-buy-votes” spending.