Big spenders can be found in both parties

There is good and bad news from Washington. The good news is now that Democrats control the Congress and President Bush has found his long-lost veto pen and now wants Congress to eliminate some of the wasteful spending found in the federal budget.

After signing the 2008 omnibus spending bill, the president scolded the Democrat Congress for wasting taxpayers' money on pork- barrel projects. The bad news is that for six years, the president signed every bloated spending bill sent to his desk by the Republican Congress.

A cynical taxpayer might describe the president's scolding of Democrats for wasteful spending blatant hypocrisy.

Here is how federal spending and the national debt has increased under Democrat and Republican presidents from 1978 to 2005. Under Republican presidents spending increased 12.3 percent; under Democrats, 9.9 percent. While the difference in the increase of federal spending under Democrat and Republican presidents is not dramatic; that is certainly not the case with the national debt.

Under Republicans the national debt has increased 38.6 percent; under Democrats, only 4.2 percent. Perhaps this will shatter the ill-founded belief that Democrats are big spenders while Republicans are fiscally conservative. The sad truth is that both parties are big spenders.

From 1996 to 2007, it was Republicans who loaded up the annual appropriation bills with waste and sent the national debt soaring to where it is now more than $9.1 trillion.

Victor Darst

West Dundee