It's been all downhill

When the younger Bush was elected in 2000, Republicans gained unified control of the White House, the House and, for most of the last six years, the Senate.

Yet what majority control produced was lavish farm subsidies; the Medicare drug bill, which is the biggest entitlement expansion since the Great Society; enormous funding increases for Cabinet departments Republicans once pledged to eliminate; highway bills larded with bridges to nowhere; and a galaxy of special spending earmarks for individual lawmakers' pet projects -- along with an invasion of Iraq.

"Starting with George W. Bush, it's been all downhill," said William Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute and a former Reagan official. "The growth of federal spending has been the highest since Lyndon Johnson, this is the first Republican war in over a century in which the ground combat lasted more than a few days, we've had an erosion of our civil liberties ... it's really a very sad story."