Pres. Bush: "The Most Profligate Spender In At Least 40 Years"

Pres. Bush has broken another record:

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.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group.

“He’s a big spender,” Keating said. “No question about it.”

Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors.

Prairie Weather: "Of the five biggest spenders since 1964, three are Republicans and Bill Clinton isn't one of the other two."

How big a spender is Bush?

Steve Benen: "During Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, grew 4.6%. Under Bush, spending grew at an average annual rate of 5.3%." And according to the Cato Institute, "[D]iscretionary spending went up twice as much under George W. Bush than under Bill Clinton."

The Gun-Toting Liberal objects to being told that "Homeland Security spending has soared":

... Sorry to interrupt here, but allow me to remind you there was NO “Department Of Homeland Security” before President Bush established it. Come to think of it, there wasn’t even a “Transportation Safety Administration” before President Bush created it. Two HUGE “gub’mint” beaurocracies, built courtesy of YOUR Republican President and YOUR Republican Congress (at the time). ...

But let's be fair here. We did save some money on health care for sick kids:

The really funny thing about all this is that this “news” is coming the week after the dead-end Bush right just FREAKED THE FUCK OUT about the relatively minor spending increase (by comparison) that went along with the S-Chip expansion. It is almost like the people who still support Bush are as dumb as he is. I guess they just decided they had to draw the line somewhere, and after a couple of trillion dollars pissed away without much comment from the right, that line was Graeme Frost.

UndieLib calls it "Trickle Down Your Leg Bushynomics."
And here's the rub:

... [F]or Bush’s Big Spending, it sure as hell isn’t helping folks in this country on iota. In fact, many of (or all) of Bush’s programs he’s pushed on the American people are utter and complete failures. And in fact, more people are struggling economically under the Bush regime than they have in years.