With all due respect to someone who carries such a noble pen(post)name, I must defer.....President Bush was handed an economy in decline, a military out of money and with low moral, a drug enforcement agency gutted, almost every single agency and cabinet missing tens of millions, some hundreds of millions, some billions of dollars, our nations' secure labs in disarray, our secrets and security comprimised, nearly every aspect of the government politicized, thousands of Clinton appointees with knives sharpened and ready to do as much damage to the new administration as possible, an outgoing president refusing to cooperate fully with the transition of the new executive, claiming that Bush may not have really won the 2000 election, and it goes on and on......then after only a few months in office we are attacked(911) and are in a war to defeat our enemies (and rightly so), and anyone who has studied our history knows that during a major war(s), our country runs a deficit (it has been this way since our first war of independance.)
Now, all the while, the democrats and the big media, hollywood and the socialists in America are trying to convince as many people as possible that we are going to hell in a handbasket.
Personally, I think that under the circumstances, Bush is doing a very good job. Is he perfect? No, none of us are....but, he's got my vote over any democrat, any socialist, and any weak knee naysayer who may run against him.
My point is that he could have held the line on a lot of places where domestic spending was concerned, but he didn't. He didn't just throw in the towel; he joined forces with "the enemy" (Dem's) and has passed budget increases that Clinton would have blushed at. And he's increased non-defense spending at a higher rate than defense spending!
If Al Gore had won, and had presented the exact same budgets as George Bush has, everyone on this forum would have been up in arms about it, and the Republicans in the Congress would have done everything in their power to prevent the legislation from passing. But because Bush is "our guy", he gets a pass on it. Why? Because he's "taking issues away from the Dem's", and they won't be able to use them against him in November.
In my book, when one party's issues are advancing and another declining, then I'd say you have a clear indicator of which party is actually "winning". And from this seat, the party that controls both the White House and both chambers of the Congress is the one caving in.