Overspending causes and cure

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Perhaps no issue, outside of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, has angered conservatives more than the growth in federal spending during George W. Bush's presidency.

Granted, Mr. Bush began his tenure by effectively slashing more than $1.4 trillion from the government's 10-year revenue projections through his tax cuts.

Few of his critics see this as a spending cut, but if those tax cuts had not been passed, that money would have been spent, instead of remaining in the private sector where it fueled investment, job-creation and economic growth.

That growth has paid off handsome dividends in the form of increased tax revenues that this year shrank the federal budget deficit by $100 billion.

Still, there is no getting around the fact that spending has risen over the last five years, in many areas dramatically. But are the increases excessive or is there a reasonable justification for much of it?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is circulating a memo that defends the increases, arguing that much of it is due to the war against terrorism -- a claim that Mr. Bush's fiscal critics say is a gross exaggeration, if not a coverup.

Drafted by Bill Hoagland, a senior Frist adviser and a warrior in many budget wars, the memo does not deny that there has been "unnecessary and wasteful spending" by the Republican Congress. "In a $2.5 trillion budget, how could there not be?" Mr. Hoagland says.

But he says "the case can be made that government spending over the last five years has not been profligate," given the geopolitical threats we have faced since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

In defense of the spending levels, Mr. Hoagland points to two catastrophic events of the last half-decade that forced the government to act and to spend hundreds of billions of dollars.

First, the September 11 attacks and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to topple two terrorist regimes and the larger global war on terrorism that has cost $290 billion thus far, plus the $50 billion in this month's Senate-passed defense bill.