Bush’s Brain, Karl Rove, appeared on FoxBusiness Channel’s Freedom Watch last week. He began his interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano by “taking exception” to the Judge’s remark that Bush “abandon[ed] fiscal beliefs” and “allowed federal spending to balloon.”
According to Rove, Bush is a conservative, because . . .
- Non-defense discretionary spending grew by 16% before Bush came along
- Bush got the INCREASES down to 2%
- And then shrunk the INCREASE to nearly zero
So-called, “non-defense discretionary spending” is a fictional category that amounts to a mere 18% of the budget. And Bush didn’t even cut that. All he did (if he did anything) was shrink the amount by which they intended to increase the budget. Again, that’s NOT a cut.
But Bush did give us the single largest entitlement expansion since Medicare, with the Prescription Drug Act, which increased spending by $550 billion over ten years. With it’s “donut hole,” it was doomed to be labeled inadequate, and even more spending was allocated to fill the hole, during the last Congress when it passed Obamacare.
Bush lied us into war. We’re still in Iraq today, and thus far, it’s cost well over $1 trillion.
Rove’s nit-picking reminded me of the prizes available at this carnival — he sounds just like Navin R. Johnson.