
{"id":693,"date":"2007-10-24T16:43:59","date_gmt":"2007-10-24T23:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/24\/hey-big-spender\/"},"modified":"2007-10-24T16:43:59","modified_gmt":"2007-10-24T23:43:59","slug":"hey-big-spender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/24\/hey-big-spender\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey, Big Spender!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin: 10px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.mcclatchydc.com\/smedia\/2007\/10\/23\/17\/483-20071023-BUSH-SPENDING.small.prod_affiliate.91.jpg\" alt=\"Chart showing Presidential Spending\" \/><\/div>\n<p>In another case of look at the deeds, not at the words it is revealed that the present Administration, with the support of Congress, is the largest spender of public funds and has overseen the largest expansion of government in the past 40 years. From the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/227\/story\/20767.html\" target=\"_blank\" >McClatchy Washington Bureau<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nGeorge 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&#8217;s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big government guy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.<\/p>\n<p>The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big spender,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Keating said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No question about it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors.<\/p>\n<p>When adjusted for inflation, discretionary spending \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or budget items that Congress and the president can control, including defense and domestic programs, but not entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare \u00e2\u20ac\u201d shot up at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent during Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first six years, Slivinski calculates.<\/p>\n<p>That tops the 4.6 percent annual rate Johnson logged during his 1963-69 presidency. By these standards, Ronald Reagan was a tightwad; discretionary spending grew by only 1.9 percent a year on his watch.<\/p>\n<p>Discretionary spending went up in Bush&#8217;s first term by 48.5 percent, not adjusted for inflation, more than twice as much as Bill Clinton did (21.6 percent) in two full terms, Slivinski reports.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/227\/story\/20767.html\" target=\"_blank\" >Read more&#8230;<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In another case of look at the deeds, not at the words it is revealed that the present Administration, with the support of Congress, is the largest spender of public funds and has overseen the largest expansion of government in the past 40 years. From the McClatchy Washington Bureau: George W. Bush, despite all his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}