Don't Spend, Amend

It's time to write budgetary discipline into the Constitution.

BY PETE DU PONT
Monday, October 24, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

How big, how expensive and how fiscally generous to industries and local communities should America's national government be?

The spending policies of the current administration have made this the central domestic public policy question, for government has substantially grown under the leadership of a political party that for many decades has claimed to be the party of smaller government.

The real annual growth rate of federal government outlays is nearly at its highest modern percentage. Under President Clinton it was only 1.5%, under Ronald Reagan 2.6% and under Lyndon Johnson 5.7%. Spending has grown 5.6% a year since George W. Bush took office, and it seems likely to keep rising. Of course the war in Iraq is a part of it, but the current administration's domestic spending increase is 7.1% a year, the highest since the 1960s.

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