Peter Beinart tells readers of this week’s New Republic that the conservative critics of President Bush need to just get over themselves.
As Beinart writes:
To listen to Bush’s critics, you would think that discretionary, nonsecurity-related spending has exploded on his watch. [Note: Emphasis is mine — you’ll see why this is important in a minute]. But it hasn’t. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has shown, when you take account of inflation and population growth, it grew a mere 2 percent between 2001 and 2006. And, as a percentage of GDP, it actually fell. What has exploded — rising 32 percent after inflation and population growth — is spending on defense, homeland security, and international affairs. And the people most responsible for those increases are conservatives themselves, who demanded an expansive war on terrorism.*
The first half of the claim boils down to this: If you strip away defense, homeland security, entitlement spending and international aid — what Beinart calls “discretionary, nonsecurity-related spending” — you discover that government hasn’t really grown all that much by historical standards.
The problem? Those categories account for 80 percent of the entire federal budget.
Call it the “Yeah, but” defense. Yeah, the budget has expanded massively, but if you take away the really big categories — and don’t feel compelled to clarify how you’re defining those big categories — then we come off looking really good! (Of course, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the GOP really doesn’t come off looking good. Let’s just assume they do for the sake of argument.)