BamsBams,
He is NOT spending less...He is spending MORE!!! and he is also shifting more Federal control to the state level. This man is big government all the way...
Read this....
Bush maintains a stated desire to streamline the government. On Monday, he sent Congress a budget that would eliminate or consolidate 150 programs. But a growing number of conservatives are uneasy with what they deride as "big-government conservatism."
"He keeps expanding the federal involvement into state and local affairs," said Chris Edwards, a tax and budget expert at the Cato Institute, a think tank that often supports the president's agenda. "My hope would be that there would be an electoral rebuke of big [-government] Republicans like there was when the tectonic plates shifted in 1994."
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), said: "The Republican majority, left to its own devices from 1995 to 2000, was a party committed to limited government and restoring the balances of federalism with the states. Clearly, President Bush has had a different vision, and that vision has resulted in education and welfare policies that have increased the size and scope of government."
'A non-starter'
Pence, an influential leader of House conservatives, said 50 Republicans gathered in Baltimore this past week and discussed, among other things, an overwhelming desire to protest the expansion of government by opposing Bush's education plan for high school students. While only 33 House Republicans opposed the No Child Left Behind law in the first term, Pence predicted that a significantly larger number will vote against expanding the program to cover high schools. Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation, a pro-Bush think tank, agreed. "It's a non-starter" in the minds of a large number of Republicans, he said.
In many ways, Bush is simply accelerating the trend toward a bigger, more activist government that was started early in his presidency. Bush not only greatly expanded the federal education system with the No Child Left Behind law, but he also signed the largest expansion of Medicare benefits when he added prescription drug coverage to the program in 2003. The Medicare plan alone is now estimated to cost at least $720 billion over the next decade. Reacting to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, provided the federal government broad surveillance powers through the USA Patriot Act, and requested a significantly larger national defense budget.
All of this is a far cry from Republican dogma circa 1995 -- the year of the Republican Revolution. Back then, GOP leaders from Sen. Robert J. Dole (Kan.) to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) talked of eliminating entire Cabinet departments, including Education, shrinking government, and returning power to the states and the people.
