Just caught this in a piece Megan McArdle penned on the growth in Washington, D.C. (that had Glenn linked on Instapundit):
In the next few years, it’s reasonable to expect that the ten year boom in government expansion will come to an end. Does that mean that the DC housing-and-retail boom ends with it? Will population stall?
Ten year boom? Guess that undermines the theory of George W. Bush as a budget cutter and deregulator.
RELATED: So, DC has nation’s biggest increase in population growth*?
Wait, wait. Budget cutter? Who ever said George W. Bush cut the budget? Certainly not Republicans, and the big Democratic concerns I can remember at the time were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, curtailing of civil liberties, and (ironically) the expanding federal deficit. That last one would actually seem the opposite of seeing Bush as a ‘budget cutter’.
Let’s hope.
Put it this way: the monstrous growth in government won’t be over, *until* the DC housing market collapses. (Which, unlike the rest of the country, it has yet to do.)
I lived in northern VA for 12 years until I moved away in MAy of 2011. What drove me away? The high cost of living, the traffic, the intolerant and rude liberals. Anyway, I live now in a socialist people’s paradise of Santa Fe, but at least the people are friendly and won’t bite your head off.
To give you reference, my house went up 109% in value over a dozen years, which is more than much of the USA.
Its the traffic that would keep me from living in Northern VA. When I were there last summer, I had my relatives drive me around. And that was when I still had my drivers license. After 75 years of having a drivers license the DMV says “no more” you are too old.
Really? Which ones?
What sort of retardation is required to see a deficit that goes from $400 billion to $170 billion “expanidng”???
Like the cartoon in today’s USA Today. ” …now entering the twelfth year of the Bush economy.”