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Bush Beats LBJ on Spending [a report from Cato Institute]
Cato.org ^
Posted on 10/09/2005 7:59:30 AM PDT by alessandrofiaschi
In the latest Cato Tax and Budget Bulletin, Stephen Slivinski uses revised data released during the summer by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to make side-by-side comparisons of the spending habits of each president during the last 40 years. While the data show that all presidents presided over net increases in spending, George W. Bush is shown to be one of the biggest spenders of them all, even outpacing Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.
An excerpt from the report: "The increase in discretionary spending - that is, all nonentitlement programs - in Bush's first term was 48.5 percent in nominal terms. That's more than twice as large as the increase in discretionary spending during Clinton's entire two terms (21.6 percent), and just higher than Lyndon Johnson's entire discretionary spending spree (48.3 percent)."
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KEYWORDS: america; army; budget; bush; bushisnotreagan; business; carter; cato; clinton; clintonism; congress; conservatism; conservatives; constitution; data; defense; democrats; economics; economy; education; eminentdomain; federalspending; fiscalconservatism; foundingfathers; freemarket; gop; government; growth; gwot; iraq; klinton; lbj; liberal; libertarian; lyndonbjohnson; market; medicare; military; pileon; pinglist; presidency; president; reagan; report; republicans; senate; spending; statistics; tax; taxes; taxspend; us; usa; war; wh; whitehouse; wlbj; wot
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To: Loyal Buckeye
I am not sure CATO is sufficiently compensating for Bush having to deal with 9/11 at a time when the country was in recession. There is no reason to apply any "compensating" for that. The President can address that situation in either the right way (insist on spending cuts elsewhere to balance the necessary increases in defense spending, and veto any non-compliant budget) or the wrong way (pour out more red ink).
141
posted on
10/12/2005 1:31:52 PM PDT
by
steve-b
(A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
To: bkepley
I was commenting on them including homeland security as an unnecessary expense. You need to critique what they actually said, not what you make up out of whole cloth.
DISCRETIONARY spending includes everything that is not specifically required by law. It has nothing to do with how "necessary" the expenses in question are, only with how much control can be immediately exercised over them.
The proper response to an increase in necessary spending is to make corresponding cuts in non-necessary spending. The ongoing and blatant failure to do so is, quite rightly, criticized by Cato.
142
posted on
10/12/2005 1:37:48 PM PDT
by
steve-b
(A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
To: Kaslin
a veto can be overwritten, at which a bill becomes law anyway Yes, and if Congress had passed all this excess spending over Bush's veto, then Bush would be blameless (having failed after making an honest effort).
143
posted on
10/12/2005 1:40:15 PM PDT
by
steve-b
(A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
To: steve-b
You need to critique what they actually said, not what you make up out of whole cloth. Take a break guy, it was someone else who said "uh..homeland security is not an unnecessary expense" or something like that and I commented on what he said. Now, was he wrong? Could be. Did he "make it up out of whole cloth"? I don't know but I doubt it. Even people who are wrong on an internet web site are not necessarily malevolent.
144
posted on
10/12/2005 1:53:08 PM PDT
by
bkepley
To: dpwiener
To: krshnbrn
I have a feeling that whichever party wins the 2008 presidential election is going to regret it. I can’t back that up, it’s just a hunch.
146
posted on
10/24/2007 1:06:24 PM PDT
by
amchugh
(large and largely disgruntled)
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