President George W. Bush: Big Government Spender, Not Fiscal Conservative

Republicans constantly and conveniently remind us that President Bush was a man of fiscal responsibility, tax cuts, smaller government and less regulation. Yet these claims are simply not true, and that's what bothers me. A president who runs on conservative economic principles but works with Democrats in creating deficits and debt is, obviously, not a true conservative president. I'm here to set the record straight and inform those who may not know or are willfully ignorant that the President Bush has spent just as much -- if not more -- than the President Obama during his time in office.

Here are some details about President Bush's spending compared to President Obama's spending (1):

President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.

President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.

President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.

President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

The following charts also illustrate that President Bush was one of the biggest government spenders since President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ):



"Figure 1 shows the average increase in total spending under recent presidents. Bush II was the biggest spender since LBJ. His spending increases were far larger than the three prior presidents" (2).



"Figure 2 shows total federal spending without interest payments. Presidents have the least discretionary control over interest. The biggest spenders by this measure were again LBJ and Bush II. Note that Bush’s record by this measure is worse than in Figure 1. That is because Bush lucked out with relatively low interest rates on the federal debt and relatively low amounts of federal debt because of four years of surpluses under President Clinton" (2).



"For Figure 3, I took out both interest payments and defense spending from the totals. So spending includes domestic discretionary spending and so-called entitlement spending–in other words, mainly spending on the growing federal welfare state. By this measure, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon had awful records. These were the years of massive creation and expansion of federal subsidy programs for the elderly, state governments, and many other groups. By the late-1970s, the creation of new programs had slowed but existing programs continued to grow" (2).

But why am I contesting this? What sparked me to unmask this generation's (those that thought he was a good president at least) "conservative icon" as the true big-government Republican he really is.

Well, earlier today, I read an article titled Why is Andrew Sullivan So Dumb by Joe B. Pollack on biggovernment.com which counter-attacked an already issued or soon-to-be-issued article in the next edition of Newsweek titled Why are Obama's Critics So Dumb? (3).

In this article, Sullivan argued several points in favor of President Obama. Although I agreed with most of Pollack's rebuttals to Sullivan's dissertation, I disagree with his last comments:

"What is in front of Sullivan’s nose is Obama’s incompetence. He has coasted on the military success of his Republican predecessor, and is taking credit for moderate economic progress enabled by a Republican Congress that has held taxes, regulation, and spending in check."

The key phrase in that excerpt is "spending in check". The points and graphs above provide evidence to the contrary. Why mainstream conservatives fail to see that President George W. Bush was a big-government spender boggles my mind. The evidence is there.

It's not just the spending that bothers me.  It's the corrosion of our constitution civil liberties caused by the over-aggressive arm and reach of the federal government. Recently, President Obama signed and declared the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) martial law, meaning the military has the ability to detain American citizens suspected of domestic terrorism without trial and the right to ha beaus corpus. According to the American Civil Liberties Union:

"Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again.  The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA.  In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war." (4)

They of course are referring to the Uniting (and) Strengthening American (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (aka USA PATRIOT). The bill has its noble intentions, but also violates our fourth amendment rights by allowing federal law enforcement agencies to wiretap and search homes WITHOUT a warrant. 

The Patriot Act is one of the most intrusive pieces of legislation in this country's long history, and it was signed by a president who every red-blooded conservative thinks was the best thing (besides Ronald Reagan) that ever happened to this country.


Where was the outcry then?


The fact of the matter is conservatives cannot praise President Bush while condemning President Obama for doing the same exact things. I urge conservatives to think twice before highlighting differences in fiscal policy between the two presidents. After all, President Bush did spend hundreds of billions on defense and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 which set aside $300 billion to the Federal Housing Administration to fix sub prime mortgages. He expanded Medicare, and shares responsibility with our current president for the massive national debt which threatens to crush the U.S. economy.


If you use President Bush as an example of fiscal policy, you will lose that debate every time... guaranteed!


1. http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/

2. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/george-w-bush-biggest-spender-since-lbj/
3. http://biggovernment.com/jpollak/2012/01/16/why-is-andrew-sullivan-so-dumb/
4. http://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/NDAA
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Economic_Recovery_Act_of_2008