Good piece.
We felt like Christians in Ancient Rome.
Being on the Left Coast, I know this feeling. :-)
Well, after three years with George W. Bush at the helm, many conservatives are starting to feel like we've been sent to the catacombs.
I'd laugh, but it's starting to hurt too much.
For some it started with his plan to offer amnesty-lite to illegal immigrants. For others, it's his fence-sitting on gay marriage. For others, like me, it was his signing of the campaign finance reform bill even though he thought it was unconstitutional. Or maybe it was his support for steel tariffs. Or the farm bill. I forget.
The unAmnesty. That's what got me.
What unites pretty much all of these grumblers is a deep sense of, well, disgust with how much this administration is spending.
Yes.
When it comes to taxpayer dollars, this is the second most "generous" administration in American history, second only to that of another Texan, Lyndon Johnson. There may be good aspects to George Bush's "compassionate conservatism," though on the whole I never liked it, but it's clear that compassion doesn't come cheap at the Bush White House, on whose watch overall spending from 2001 to 2003 grew at 16 percent and discretionary spending went up 27 percent. That's double Bill Clinton's rate.
........................................................
Under Bush, spending on education has gone up 60.8 percent, on labor 56 percent and on the Department of the Interior by 23.4 percent . The price tag for the president's Medicare plan alone starts, but won't end, at $400 billion. The farm bill was a pork horror show, pure and simple. More people work for the federal government now than at any time since the end of the Cold War.
****! That's worse than I thought!
Conservatives have stayed relatively quiet and liberals have controlled the anti-Bush microphone.
Yeah. But that's changing.
Conservatives have stayed relatively quiet and liberals have controlled the anti-Bush microphone.
Amen.
But I'm not sure George Bush understands how much he is asking from those who brought him to the dance.
He will. Believe me, he will. |
