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Republican spending orgy
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Wednesday, July 23, 2003

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. ...

...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....