In New Hampshire yesterday, Jeb Bush found something to disagree with his brother’s presidency—sort of:

“I think that, in Washington during my brother’s time, Republicans spent too much money,” Mr. Bush said Thursday when asked to describe where there was a “big space” between himself and his brother George W. Bush. “I think he could have used the veto power. He didn’t have line-item veto power, but he could have brought budget discipline to Washington, D.C.”

As Peter Suderman noted in Reason, there’s some weaseling in there—it’s “Republicans” who spent too much, not specifically the Republican president. And Jeb quickly went on to say that such criticism “seems kind of quaint right now given the fact that after he left, the budget and deficits and spending went up astronomically.” Suderman notes that George W. Bush in fact

presided over the most significant increase in federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson was president in the 1960s… Federal spending under Obama has increased at a far slower rate than under President Bush. Obama took Bush’s baseline and built on it, but George W. Bush’s spending increases were a big part of what made Obama’s spending possible.

Jeb had said this before—in fact, during his brother’s presidency. At CPAC in 2007, he said, “If the promise of pork and more programs is the way Republicans think they’ll regain the majority, then they’ve got a problem.” He said then that he was talking about the Republicans in Congress. And I noted then: 

But who’s he kidding? President Bush sponsored most of those “more programs,” and in six years he hasn’t vetoed a single piece of pork or a bloated entitlement bill or a new spending program. And if Jeb thinks “we lost … because we rejected the conservative philosophy in this country,” he must realize that his brother has set the agenda for Republicans over the past six years almost as firmly as Putin has set Russia’s agenda. If Republicans turned their back on limited-government conservatism, it’s because the White House told them to. Not that congressional leaders were blameless—and on Social Security reform, they did decide to resist Bush’s one good idea—but it was President Bush and his White House staff who inspired, enticed, threatened, bullied, and bully-pulpited Republicans into passing the No Child Left Behind Act, the biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, and other big-government schemes.

I also pointed out then, as Peter Suderman does today:

Although Jeb seems to have convinced conservatives that he’s much more committed to spending restraint than W—and he did veto some $2 billion in spending over eight years [as Florida governor]—his real record is much more like his brother’s. According to the Cato Institute’s Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors (pdf), he presided over “explosive growth in state spending.” Indeed, in the latest report card, only 10 governors had worse ratings on spending restraint, though—again like his brother—Jeb scored much higher on tax cutting. Federal spending is up 50 percent in six years; Florida’s spending was up 52 percent in eight years, and Jeb wasn’t fighting two foreign wars.

Republicans like to promise spending restraint, to deplore past profligacy, and then to deliver more of the same. That’s what George W. did, and it looks like Jeb is starting down the same path.