RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I am prepared to give credit where its due. I'm glad to see that George Bush is finally espousing some basic conservative fiscal policies. Hopefully this is not for show. His 2006 Budget contains some significant cuts in some domestic priorities. Some of the cuts are rather necessary, especially with regards to agricultural subsidies that are expensive and anti-free market; even some weapons programs that were considered untouchable are going to be cut. I applaud Bush for taking a stand on these issues; he's going after some very entrenched interest groups here. However he's not tying this to fundamentally needed tax reform like closing various tax loopholes. Again, this is a step in the right direction, but remember that Bush is also proposing partially privatizing the Social Security system, which is going to put us $2 billion in the red within 8 years. This isn't considering any economic downturns between now and then either. Otherwise the government is going to have to absorb the shock. But on the positive, Bush has defense and homeland security spending only going up by 2.1 percent, much less than the current rate of inflation. However this doesn't include the $80 billion dollar request he placed for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. After a long upward trend under Bush, discretionary spending is posed to go down 1% this year, if all goes well. Democratic opposition has been tepid, but they need to focus in on making sure that some basic educational and environmental programs that are effective remain intact. The Democrats will win if they can prove that a certain program works, and from there make it a difficult cut for the Republicans to promote politically. In order to return some fiscal sanity however, a lot of very tough choices on tax policy, entitlement spending, and discretionary spending are going to have to be made. I am glad to see that Bush is at least finally addressing the expansion of government and the perils of high deficit spending. However we know that talk is cheap at the end of the day. Lets see if he's willing to stand up to the Congress.

Less government? Some conservative. The amount of bureaucracy created by this administration would make a liberal blush.

Bush is little different than a socialist or fascist leader. He continues to harp on excuses such as fighting terrorism as to why government has grown tremedously. I disagree with magallen that libertarians approve of Bush's fiscal policies. All the well-known liberberians that I'm familiar with (Harry Browne, Badirnik, Mises Institute) hate what Bush has done in office.

It's quite amazing that conservatives will constantly praise this man while completely ignoring his reckless spending habits. Discretionary spending (non-defense spending) under George W. Bush has risen nearly 30% in just three years. Since assuming office, Bush has not vetoed one single spending bill, and thus he must bear some of the responsibility for the ballooning federal budget deficit and the massive rise in federal spending. Bush claims to be a fiscal conservative, yet he slashes revenue in the form of tax cuts while at the same time approving of massive spending increases for a wide variety of non-defense programs. It is clear that Bush is not the fiscal conservative he claimed to be in 2000, and that is something that may come back to haunt him come November. He accused Gore constantly of trusting government over the people and insisted that if, elected Gore would balloon the size of the budget. Ironically, it is Mr. Bush that has done that. Furthermore, the notion that a Democrat cannot control spending is extremely dumbfounded. Under Clinton, discretionary spending rose by about 4% a year. Those moderate spending increases combined with tax increases and slashes in the defense budget were largely responsible for the elimination of the budget deficit. Bush has increased discretionary spending by 30% in just his first three years, almost as much as Clinton increased discretionary spending in all of his eight years in office. That's a rather strange record for a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative.

I would say the increase of bureaucracy is a natural given the fallout from 9/11. The Homeland Security Department seemed sensible in order to increase safety for American citizens. The expansion of the Attorney General's office as well as military expansion seems natural in order to combat terrorism. I'm fair as far as considering better ideas than this, but I'm glad that Pres. Bush has staunchly defended this country since 9/11.

This is really the only major thing that I disagree with Bush on. Actually, I'm really kind of suprised that he would want to increase government. Its hard for me to understand how he can call himself Republican, but then go and increase government size. I don't think he's Hitler-fascist freak or anything like that, but the larger government is, the worse. Government should try everything to stay out of people's lives.

It's amazing to me that GWB still seems to have the support of the right wing of his own party as well as the Libertarian set with the massive Government that he is building. Massive expansion of the government combined with drastic slashing of revenues in the form of tax cuts doesn't seem like classic republican fiscal policy to me - when we will see some public discussion of this by leaders of the Republican party?

Yeah, what's up with this??? I thought one of the benchmarks of republicanism is smaller government. So what's up with the chimp's insistance of creating even more government red-tape, all in the name of keeping us safe from terrorism but in reality, pushing his own agenda?