Paul Krugman says "Basically, critics pretend that the cost of the Iraq war makes Bush a big-spending liberal." by citing Floyd Norris who writes: "Within the public sector, state and local governments are spending at the fastest pace in three decades, and federal military spending is also up. But federal spending on everything but the military is at its lowest level, as a percentage of the economy, in six years."
That may be true but I have two questions. If you want to evaluate if Bush is spending a lot shouldn't you compare him to other presidents? This would require going back more than 6 years.
Second, my understanding was the the federal government stopped giving funding to state and local governments, forcing them to increase their revenues and spending to keep up services. For the party of states rights that is what you'd expect, but to a federalist that might not be the most efficient way to spend. Also I hear complaints about unfunded mandates like No Child Left Behind which are federal regulations that force states to do things and to raise revenues to pay for them (I'm not sure if there are other examples).
Ok here's another question. Does interest on a hugely rising debt count as discretionary spending or not? (I think not).
2 comments:
Krugman just didn't hear it right. They're not saying Bush is a big-spending liberal, he's a big-spending IDIOT. You can't just take the monstrous mounds of cash this administration has wasted in their Iraqi sandbox out of the equation and say "See, they're really not spending that much." Just because the deceitful scum have left most of the real costs out of their budgets (preferring to strong-arm congress into paying for it after the fact with emergency appropriations forced down their throats by neocons screaming "you must support our troops now that we have sent them into harm's way!") doesn't mean you can pretend that money hasn't been burned (or shipped off to Iraq in huge pallets of cash to be "lost" somewhere.)
Well I'd put it this way and it's a good point. If you found you had to spend a lot of money in one place (or you choose to), wouldn't it make sense you'd spend less in other places to make up for it?
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