Wednesday, February 13, 2008

 

Hey, Big Spender

OK, a timeout from the presidential play-by-play for a little policy break. More accurately, here's a glimpse of the full impact of the Bush administration's spending policies have been. Kevin Hassett compares the Bush years and the spending baseline he inherited.

Hint: It don't look good:

If Bush had promised in January 2001 that the baseline of government spending that he inherited when he took office would be the cap during his term, then we would have a big budget surplus today. It would have been easy to do. He just had to say: ``I will not spend one penny more than President Bill Clinton planned to. I will veto any bill that tries to.''
....

To see how different the world could have been, I gathered data from a number of sources and ran an alternative history. In that wishful place, government spending was set equal to the spending envisioned by the Congressional Budget Office in the January 2001 long-run forecast, plus the spending for the war in Iraq and to fight terrorism. This simulation assumes that the war would have happened in spite of Bush's spending promise, and wouldn't have induced him to seek cuts elsewhere.

The difference between that spending path and the one we are on is huge. Today, we expect federal spending in 2008 will be $2.9 trillion. According to the alternative history, spending would be $2.5 trillion.

UPDATE: It slipped my mind when posting this earlier, but thanks to long-time regular commentator, Moose, for bringing the Hassett piece to my attention.

Labels: ,


Bookmark and Share


<< Home
|

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Google
Web raggedthots.blogspot.com
Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Technorati search
Search Now:
Amazon Logo
  •  RSS
  • Add to My AOL
  • Powered by FeedBurner
  • Add to Google Reader or Homepage
  • Subscribe in Bloglines
  • Share on Facebook