The big binge.(President George W. Bush's planned cutbacks on government spending)

A FEW weeks ago, President Bush invited a group of conservative economists to the White House. The president and his men wanted advice on what steps should be taken next to help the economy grow. The response was nearly unanimous among the dozen attendees: start cutting government spending. Not long after, Treasury secretary John Snow announced that a top economic priority for the Bush administration in 2004--and, we hope, in a second term--will be "fiscal restraint." It's about time.

Until recently, the White House has been in a state of denial on the spending problem in Washington. In fact, the Bush team has been prickly about criticism from conservatives about the return of big government under this president. Uncle Sam's waistline has grown by more than a half-trillion dollars in just three years, despite a Republican House, Senate, and White House. The Office of Management and Budget has finagled data to make it appear that the only reason the budget is expanding is the War on Terror. Wrong. It is certainly correct that the budget has grown substantially in the vital areas of national defense and homeland security, but the unappealing truth is that under this president, the budget has expanded in almost every agency--no matter how wasteful, redundant, or counterproductive.

The table above shows that inflation-adjusted domestic discretionary spending under President Bush has grown faster than under any other president in 40 years.

Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation has been examining how much of the budget growth in recent years is due to national-security spending. Riedl finds that when you tease out all the anti-terrorism spending, it's still true that "domestic non-security programs are growing at their fastest rate in a decade." Even obsolete agencies that Republicans have long wanted to disconnect from life support are thriving in the hands of Republican appropriators. Says John Berthoud, president of the National Taxpayers Union: "For the first time in many years we are seeing that Republicans are outspending the Democrats."

The original Contract with America budget in 1995 slated more than 200 programs for termination. ...