As my regular reader know, I think President Bush has done an abysmal job domestically. He has presided over one of the largest increases in domestic spending (non-defense related) in modern history.

I had hoped that at least one of the Democratic contenders would bring a dose of fiscal responsibility to the campaign. Alas, the non-partisan National Taxpayer Union claims otherwise.

"All the Presidential challengers have to varying degrees disparaged the current size of federal deficits," said study author and NTUF Policy Analyst Drew Johnson. "Yet, our examination of the candidates' spending promises reveals an inconvenient fact: the deficit potholes they're complaining about on the road to the White House would only deepen under their own policies."

...Highlights of the study include:

If the policy agenda of any one of the eight candidates were enacted in full, annual federal spending would rise by at least $169.6 billion (Lieberman) and as much as $1.33 trillion (Sharpton). This would translate to a yearly budget hike of between 7.6% and 59.5%.

All candidates offer platforms that call for more spending than would be offset by repealing the Bush tax cuts (using even generous estimates of the tax cuts' impact).

The eight candidates have proposed over 200 ideas to increase federal spending, and only two that would cut federal spending. Those two proposals have been offered by Dennis Kucinich (thus, the seven other candidates haven't made a single proposal to cut any spending).

Although they may attempt to stress their policy differences, Howard Dean and Wesley Clark would both increase annual federal outlays by roughly the same amount ($222.9 billion vs. $220.7 billion, respectively)... while John Kerry would "only" increase spending by $265.11 billion.

Johnson noted that the study "does not even consider that the temptation to spend more money can increase after entering the White House." George W. Bush, for example, who campaigned as a fiscal conservative in 2000, has presided over a jump in federal spending of 23.7% since taking office. Yet, Johnson still found that even the most parsimonious of the Democrat Presidential candidates would have outpaced the spending run-up under Bush by 15%.

Assuming these figures are true, this is really disheartening. No wonder some people see no difference between the two parties. While I think both parties profess to support different ideas, neither of them have many fiscally disciplined politicians. The scariest thing about these findings is that only Dennis Kucinich has proposed any ideas that would actually cut spending. What is a fiscal conservative to do?

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