Check out the following executive summary of this Cato Institute paper entitled The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders:

President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. His 2006 budget doesn?t cut enough spending to change his place in history, either.
Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush?s first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton?s last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush?s first term.
The Republican Congress has enthusiastically assisted the budget bloat. Inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent.
The GOP was once effective at controlling non-defense spending. The final non-defense budgets under Clinton were a combined $57 billion smaller than what he proposed from 1996 to 2001. Under Bush, Congress passed budgets that spent a total of $91 billion more than the president requested for domestic programs. Bush signed every one of those bills during his first term. Even if Congress passes Bush?s new budget exactly as proposed, not a single cabinet-level agency will be smaller than when Bush assumed office.
Republicans could reform the budget rules that stack the deck in favor of more spending. Unfortunately, senior House Republicans are fighting the changes. The GOP establishment in Washington today has become a defender of big government.

This Slate op-ed provides historical perspective to the findings of the Cato Institute study. Hat tip to Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution for the links.

Ron Chernow — the author of The House of Morgan (1990), The Warburgs (1994), Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998), and last year’s marvelous Alexander Hamilton (2004) — writes this interesting NY Times op-ed in which he provides insightful historical perspective on the current political battle that is brewing over the misguided proposals of certain Republican Party politicians to cut off federal financing for the judiciary and even abolish some lower-level federal courts.
After explaining how President Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans attempted to undermine the independence of the American judiciary during the early 1800’s after former President John Adams and the Federalist Party had stacked the federal judiciary immediately before Adams had left office, Mr. Chernow observes wisely:

So, before they starve the lower courts of funds, Republicans in Congress and the conservative evangelicals who support them would be wise to ponder these events of the early 1800’s. For all the talk today of tyrannical judges, the judiciary still relies on Congress for its financing and on the executive branch to enforce its decisions. It could easily, once again, end up at the mercy of the other two branches, upsetting the delicate balance the framers intended.

Or, stated another way, if a leader of the stature of Thomas Jefferson almost compromised the independence of the judiciary, just think what damage Tom DeLay could do.