Power Line News

Patrick n ABQ - 31 October 2007 08:53 PM

Thanks for the URLs. Assuming that one way or other I can access the data behind the charts, I’m going to dig in to what’s happened with “non-defense discretionary.”

You’re quite welcome.  This site has historical spending by category from 1962 to projected 2008.  There are lots of drill down opportunities…

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/index.php

If you need/want it, you can get inflation factors here, under the CPI (consumer price index) header:

http://www.bls.gov/cpi/

You should find that roughly half of the $1 trillion budget increase was in discretionary non-military.  When Bush took office the federal budget was about $2 trillion, it’s now about $3 trillion.  Make sure that young children are not present when you look at the numbers, you may say things that young ears shouldn’t hear.

I grew up in a middle-class Minnesota Republican family. When I was 21, and after, I attended precinct Republican caususes. This was when the VietNam war was raging. Remarkably, the attendees had extraordinary debates at these caucuses about the war in a very civil but nevertheless vehement fashion.

King was assasinated. Bobby Kennedy was assasinated. The Chicago convention was a debacle. Gene McCarthy, a Minnesotan who was the first prominent politician to declare opposition to the war, lost handily to Hubert Humphrey, another Minnesotan who was joined at the hip to LBJ. Nixon was nominated by the Republicans with his secret plan to end the war, and he was elected, of course.

I was against the war, as you may be able to infer, but I continued to caucus with the Republicans. They still had stirring debates about VietNam, but they also stuck to some basic principles I liked: Small government, respect for privacy, taxes as low as possible. Also, the Republicans of my youth embraced the fact that there were dissenters who came to the meetings.

(This is one of the very good things about the caucus system. It begins literally at the neighborhood level, and you always know people at the meeting.)

Anyway, in about 1984, or so, I went to a Republican precinct caucus and it was flooded with ringers. I don’t suggest the attendees were not residents or anything, but they were organized as a bloc. They had only one goal, and that was to take over the precinct in the name of their single position: opposition to abortion. They had a slate of proposed officers and delegates to the district convention, and of course they swept everybody else out of the way. Probably, most of those excluded also opposed abortion. Nothing that happened was illegal or underhanded. There was just this really good organization that came in and took over,

This is about the time that it became clear to me that the Big Tent of the Minnesota Republican Party had vanished. I suppose that the old fashioned “town meeting” character of our caucus system had also vanished. It worked well in prehistoric times, but politics had become a blood sport.

The Democrats here are no better on their gut issues. Norm Coleman, our Republican Senator, started as a Democrat, but he had no chance to advance because of his abortion position. He switched parties.

The two parties have set up litmus tests that keep many citizens from participating in politics. (I’m not just talking about running for office...I’m talking about attending precinct caucuses in Minnesota.) Everybody I now know who is active in party politics now is a “pro” of some kind. A lobbyist, an ad-man, a zealot for or against a single issue.

I have no party allegiance now, and I doubt that many my age do. We would never vote a “straight ticket.” We give money to candidates, but not to a party. Welcome to the 21st Century.

Patrick n ABQ - 31 October 2007 08:53 PM

Curly Smith - 31 October 2007 07:04 PM

You don’t want/need to remove inflation.  The percentages presented are dollars of the day vs. dollars of the day.  Adjusting for inflation is only useful if you want to compare how big 1960’s budget was relative to 2006’s budget. 

Thanks for the URLs. Assuming that one way or other I can access the data behind the charts, I’m going to dig in to what’s happened with “non-defense discretionary.” I think this is where Bush II has not held the line. (But of course, where is his prescription drug bill!?! Agghh! Probably buried in Social Security etc.) Jen should be able to do this too.

LOL

your still assuming GW did not hold the line…

which is part of the myth.

yes, he can do better, but he did not do as poorly as you originally suggested.

as Curly posted, the main problem is with mandated entitlement programs (Social Security), which GW Bush tried to reform in an admirable Conservative fashion.

you may wish to include the Treasury Dept. link:

http://www.treasury.gov/

this might be helpful and objective…

Bush The Big Spender? Check Again

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, October 25, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Budget Policy: An oft-heard criticism leveled at President Bush is that he’s a “record spender.” And because it’s repeated by those at both ends of the political spectrum, it sounds right. But that doesn’t mean it is right.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501&status=article&id=278203953648874&secure=1&show=1&rss=1

Bush The Big Spender? Check Again

“Any yardstick,” that is, except the most important of all — spending as a share of GDP. On this, Bush is actually lower than most of his predecessors. Spending as a share of GDP is the most important measure of the size of government, since it measures what government actually takes from the national economy.

In the first six years of his term, including the Office of Management and Budget’s most current estimate for 2007, Bush spent, on average, 20% of GDP.

Was that a lot? Not really. As the chart shows, it puts him in the middle of the presidential pack. Since Johnson took office in late 1963, spending as a share of GDP has averaged 20.4%. And, ironically, spending under LBJ was the lowest.

So rather than a “record” spender, as some claim, Bush is actually below average.