The biggest deficits in American history ~ Thanks to Bush

From:

The biggest deficits in American history ~ Thanks to Bush
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At their national convention three years ago, Republicans pointed with
pride to the GOP's record of
fiscal rectitude.

"In the four decades from 1954 to 1994," the Republican platform
declared, "government spending
increased at an average annual rate of 7.9 percent, and the
public's debt increased from $224 billion
to $3.4 trillion."

Those were the profligate years, when Democrats usually controlled
both houses of Congress.

"Since 1994," it went on, "with Republicans leading the House and
Senate, spending has been held
to an annual 3.1 percent rate of growth, and the nation's debt will
be nearly $400 billion lower by the
end of 1993."

The federal government has operated in the black for the last two
years and is now projected to run a
surplus of nearly $5 trillion over 10 years."

Missing from the Republicans' recitation was any mention of the
Democrat who had been in the
White House since 1993.

Didn't President Clinton deserve any of the credit for the spending
restraint and budget surpluses ?

Not according to Republicans, he didn't.

In their view, they were the ones who slowed the federal spending
train and forced Clinton to curb his
big- government impulses.

If he had had a Democratic Congress to do his bidding, that train
would have raced out of control.

So here we are three years later, with not only a Republican Congress
but a Republican president, too--
and the federal spending train is racing out of control.

The Bush administration estimated last week that the government will
end the current fiscal year with
a budget deficit of $455 billion.

Over the next five years, the public debt is expected to rise by $1.9
trillion.

The administration projects next year's federal outlays at $2.27
trillion, more than $400 billion higher than when the president took
office.

As any Republican will be glad to tell you, the GOP is the party of
fiscal discipline.

Unlike the wastrels of the Democratic Party, Republicans know that all
government money is really taxpayers' money, and they take great pains
to spend that money frugally.

Sure they do.

That's why Republican George W. Bush, backed by a Republican Congress,
is on track to become the biggest spending president since LBJ.

In the first three years of the Bush administration, government
spending has climbed --
in real, inflation-adjusted terms -- by a staggering 15.6 percent.

That far outstrips the budget growth in Clinton's first three years,
when real spending climbed just
3.5 percent.

Under the first President Bush, the comparable figure was 8.3 percent;
under Ronald Reagan,
6.8 percent, and under Jimmy Carter, 13.3 percent.

No, that's not a mistake: Bush is a bigger spender than Carter was.

To be sure, Bush's budgets have had to account for Sept. 11 and the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But even when defense spending is excluded, discretionary spending has
soared by nearly 21 percent
in Bush's first three years.

In Clinton's first triennium, nondefense discretionary spending
declined slightly.

If their budgets were all you had to go by, you might peg Bush for the
Democrat and Clinton for the Republican.

The budget cycle Bush inherited in 2001 closed with a surplus of $127
billion.

The deficits that now stretch as far as the eye can see are the result
of reckless budget-busting that would have Republicans shrieking if Al
Gore were president.

To see this kind of promiscuous budgeting come out of a Republican
administration should outrage
them even more.

Predictably, liberals and Democrats are loudly blaming the Bush
deficits on the Bush tax cuts.

But tax relief isn't leaking red ink all over the budget; spending is.


In 2008, when most of the tax cuts signed by Bush will be fully phased
in, they will reduce federal revenues by $177 billion.

In the same year, total federal spending will be $494 billion higher
than it is today.

By the end of the five-year budget plan, in other words, spending
increases will outweigh tax cuts
by nearly 3 to 1.

From the pork-laden homeland security bill to last year's bloated farm
bill, Washington's orgy of spending is bringing on the biggest
deficits in American history.

The gigantic prescription-drug entitlement making its way through the
Capitol will force the budget
even further into the red and the nation even deeper into debt.

Americans count on Republicans to enforce, or at least invoke, the
First Law of Holes:
When in one, stop digging.

But Republicans rule both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the digging
is more furious than ever.

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