Many on “the right” have expressed the fear that the new Obama Administration will result in a lot bigger government.
If it does, it has a long way to go to exceed the growth of government under the George W. Bush Adminstration.
Over the last eight years, the Bush Administration has presided over a 55 percent increase in Federal government spending. Even after adjusting for inflation, real government spending has gone up by almost 30 percent.
I discuss the details of where this growth in in Big Government under Bush has been occurred in a new piece on, “Big Government under the Bush Administration.”
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It is truly embarassing that the government has grown so much under the “Conservative” partie’s presidency the past eight years. I have said it once and I will say it again – it’s no wonder Obama won. McCain was hardly offering a ‘small-government’ alternative in the past election.
-David Carlson
http://www.davidcarlsonpolitics.com
For an excellent analysis of the cost of regulation over the past ten administrations, see The Incredible Growth of the Regulators’ Budget, By Veronique de Rugy and Melinda Warren.
Look at figure 3 for the quick picture, and then tell me who the big spenders were for govt regulation! Hint: it wasn’t the Dems.
–GOVT is a four letter word. Let’s abbreviate it!–
From the article:
“When the Clinton Administration left the White House, federal spending was 18.4 percent of GDP. In 2008, at the close of the Bush Administration, federal expenditure is 20.5 percent of GDP, for an 11.4 percent increase over the last eight years. ”
How do you get an 11.4% increase going from 18.4 to 20.5? Can someone explain this to me? Thanks!
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Subtract 18.4 from 20.5 and divide the answer by 18.4.
I still shake my head in amazement at the number of people who think that the Republicans shrank the government “so that you can drown it in a bathtub”. They may be unaware that Grover Norquist doesn’t actually run the government.
This past Saturday, on the Fox show “The Beltway Boys”, Fred Barnes made me laugh out loud. He said, “I’m a free market conservative” and then said that he wants the fed govt to bail the auto industry out, and that Mitt Romney should be appointed the “auto czar”.
I eagerly waited for his head to explode from the cognitive dissonance. Somewhat to my disappointment it did not; he must have a safety valve somewhere to vent the pressure. I didn’t hear him break wind, so I guess it must have been the release of hot air from his mouth that saved him.
Thanks for the response. I don’t know too much about economics, but I hope to learn a bit more.
Sadly, nobody at the Manhattan Institute has ever thought asking him a question about his policies in spite of his belief in the free-market capitalism (Never mind that he is lying).
Of course, it got published in the Wall Street Journal as an op-ed:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122670648178429695.html
I couldn’t help laugh yesterday when I saw Bush as a press conference telling people he was a “free market guy.” He has advanced socialism more than any president since Johnson. People used to say that only Nixon could go to China. In the same way, only Republicans can cause socialism to advance in the way it has.
I can’t help but think that Bush knows full well that he isn’t anywhere near a free marketeer. Statist Rockefeller Republicans have just as much interest in conning people into thinking we have a capitalist model as the Democrats do. It shows that it’s not a partisan thing. It’s a Statist thing. Thereby it proves that Bush and his ilk are dyed in the wool Statist resorting to blinkering the public.
That’s why I abandoned the Republicans. Of course it didn’t help all the anti-libertarian articles in the National Review all but casting libertarians from the party. They’d rather be the party of economic liberalism/socialism and social conservatism. Pretty much appeal to the 55 and over, square state, set who want their pills and hip replacements paid for by the treasury and forbid abortions and drive gays back into the closet. Pretty much take the culture back before the summer of love when Lawrence Welk waved his baton. Little did such doorwardens realize that social liberalism is here to stay. And the party was abandoned by those who desire fiscal conservatism. So they drove out what is to be the future backbone of the party of the future. The Stosh’s and Stella’s and their pill demands and anti-gay persecutions don’t have much longer anyway, and the battle is about economics. They drove out the younger part of the party with their purges of libertarians and now they are a dying party. They needed to keep their eye on the year 2020 instead of 1950.
I look forward when this realization dawns on them. I hope it’s not too late to reform the Republican party into a common sense party that looks to remove the State from our lives on a consistent basis, social as well as economic/fiscal. THEN we might actually see an advancement of economic liberty.
Brad,
You sure paint a hopeful picture. Free marketeers are the future of conservatism, you say? While I hope you’re right, I don’t see much hope for that. Sure, from a rational point of view, if the Republicans of today go under because they can’t compete with the Democrats’s politically correct socialism, and the latter fails (as it will), the time might come for libertarian ideals to challenge the establishment from within.
But it can hardly be argued that the US population’s stance towards their political system is a rational one, now can it? I expect one of these two major outcomes of the period we’re about to enter:
1) Obama destroys the country and becomes exalted by the masses and intellectuals, FDR-style; 2) Obama destroys the country, people get angry, vote Republican instead, because of some vague idea that Republicans can bring about economic recovery with their “free market” policies. Needless to say, that doesn’t happen.
No, no hopes for the redemption of our current party system here. What’s most likely is that it will become more and more corrupt, until it breaks – whether in the end of government as we know it or a totalitarian state, it’s hard to tell, but I’m betting on the latter.
Why, in this blog, did you adjust federal spending for inflation? Isn’t federal spending what created the inflation in the first place?
i think the reason for adjusting government spending for inflation is to compare the value of the dollar today compared to the value of the date when the comparison begins.
The notion that george bush was a fiscal conservative as president is totally false.
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