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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (67720)	10/23/2008 8:48:19 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 90947

Although I think that the Bush Admin has allowed Gov't spending in many areas to grow far too much I attack him on that semi-reguarly and I think he deserves to be attacked on that. OTOH I think he also deserves a partial defense. 1 - The biggest part of spending is entitlements which aren't really under his control. 2 - 9/11, Katrina (and other disasters), Iraq, Afghanistan. And yes Iraq and Afghanistan where ordered by him (although at the very least if he didn't order Afghanistan he would have been seriously negligent in his duties, and Iraq is more a "should we have gone to war question, not a more general government spending issue. But the reason that its only a partial defense, is that he greatly increased federal spending in areas that where not entitlements, where not related to war, and where not related to disaster relief even indirectly. And he did little to control entitlement spending. Yes he made some effort to reform social security but he quickly gave up on it (although perhaps this was wise it considering how badly the effort was going). But he created a new entitlement (the prescription drugs program). Bush had situations which would have caused any president to have higher spending, but even taking all that in to account the best that can be said is that perhaps it moves his control of spending from "abysmal" to merely "very bad" or at best "bad".