FactCheck.org Defending Spending? Bush’s Blooper

President Bush slipped up in his hour-long interview with NBC’s Tim Russert over the weekend, claiming that the growth of discretionary federal spending has slowed markedly since he took office. But in fact, annual growth has been in double digits for the past three years [11.8% average annual growth rate], far higher than in any year of the Clinton administration [2.4% for 8 years].