George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he’s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.
Defense spending is the big driver — but hardly the only one.
Under Bush it’s grown on average by 5.7 percent a year. Under LBJ — who had a war to fund, too — it rose by 4.9 percent a year. Both numbers are adjusted for inflation.
Current annual defense spending — not counting war costs — is 25 percent above the height of the Reagan-era buildup, Hellman said.
Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, points to education spending. Adjusted for inflation, it’s up 18 percent annually since 2001, thanks largely to Bush’s No Child Left Behind act.
The 2002 farm bill, he said, caused agriculture spending to double its 1990s levels.
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.
And the 2005 highway bill, which included thousands of “earmarks,” or special local projects stuck into the legislation by individual lawmakers without review, cost $295 billion.
“He has presided over massive increases in almost every category … a dramatic change of pace from most previous presidents,” said Slivinski.
I have met many Democrats who criticize the Republican “theocracy,” and act as if the “separation of church and state” means that anyone involved in government should be an atheist, and that religious people have no right to make laws. Given that, I always find it hilarious when Democrats try to talk about their belief in God. It seems like fake, contrived pandering. I’m not saying there aren’t believing Democrats, just that the average Democrat that I’ve encountered believes that religious people are dumb and nuts.
So what, then, do we make of it when Democratic politicians use churches and God as political tools, which they always accuse the Republicans of doing?
Obama said, “Sometimes you can become fearful, sometimes you can become vain, sometimes you can seek power just for power’s sake instead of because you want to do service to God. I just want all of you to pray that I can be an instrument of God….”
He finished his brief remarks by saying, “We’re going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”
Someone please explain how that isn’t “theocracy” and an extreme violation of “the separation of church and state.” Or is this just more hypocrisy and patronization?
On a related note, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “prays for President Bush to change his policies ‘all the time.’” How dare she use religion to try to influence our government!!!!
Imagine if we’d reported and opined on WWII the way we do now.
By Victor Davis Hanson
May 1, 1945—After the debacles of February and March at Iwo Jima, and now the ongoing quagmire on Okinawa, we are asked to accept recent losses that are reaching 20,000 dead brave American soldiers and yet another 50,000 wounded in these near criminally incompetent campaigns euphemistically dubbed “island hopping.”
Meanwhile, we are no closer to victory over Japan. Instead, we are hearing of secret plans of invasion of the Japanese mainland slated for 1946 or even 1947 that may well make Okinawa seem like a cake walk and cost us a million casualties and perhaps involve a half-century of occupation. The extent of the current Kamikaze threat, once written off as the work of a “bunch of dead-enders,” was totally unforeseen, even though such suicidal zealots are in the process of inflicting the worst casualties on the U.S. Navy in its entire history.
