Matt Yglesias provides some charts from the
liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that show defense
spending up and domestic discretionary spending down under
President Bush, especially if you lump in all security spending
with defense. I don't have much of a problem with defense
increasing its share of federal spending while domestic programs
shrink, because national defense is the primary constitutional
responsibility of the federal government. But I do have some
problems with these figures. First, they use funding levels rather
than actual expenditure levels. If you look at the money that was
really spent as a percentage of GDP, you get different results.
Second, looking at spending patterns from 2001 to 2008 allows
Bush's resistance to spending by the Democratic Congress to cancel
out the GOP spending binge of 2001-06. When Republicans had the
greatest opportunity to control federal spending, they instead
increased it virtually across the board.
topics:
Constitution
