Let Bush Be Reagan

If George Bush had the bubbly, ebullient personality of Ronald Reagan, I don't think he'd be getting so much grief from his own party. Reagan presided over huge deficits too, but his position was that you don't balance the budget by raising taxes. I think that Bush feels that way, too, but he hasn't put up enough of a protest.

My guess is that he's OK with some big government programs, like improving education, but he's been pretty naive about Washington. I think that he figures that Congress was elected to represent the people and so it's not his job to be their nanny. He also knows that it's the percentage of GDP that matters more than the dollar amount.

Spending is like weeds, if you don't fight it all the time, it will take things over. You can get along with some deficits, but we should remember how we're doing this without inflation. A lot of America now belongs to foreigners, including a lot of our national debt.