Dubya's fiscal irresponsibility

The Republican promise of smaller, less-intrusive government is getting harder and harder to believe.

A report just released by the libertarian Cato Institute that relates just how out-of-control spending has gotten under The Horse Wanker.

Cato finds that:

* Bush has presided over the largest increase in federal spending since Lyndon Johnson.

* Even excluding defense and homeland security spending, Bush is the biggest-spending president in 30 years.

* The federal budget grew from 18.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product on President Bill Clinton's last day in office to 20.3 percent at the end of Bush's first term.

* Add to that Bush's massive Medicare prescription-drug benefit, expected to cost $720 billion-plus over the next 10 years. (The money for that new entitlement, the first created by a president in a generation, will start flowing this year.)

Bush may have cut taxes, but that's not the same thing as shrinking government.