Nearly every budget in the last 10 years is guilty of the “budget creep” phenomenon.  The table below outlines both President Bush and President Obama’s future budget proposals:

The problem:

From President Bush’s FY2007 budget to President Obama’s FY 2011 budget, proposed spending for FY 2011 grew by $594 billion.  If we were actually going to spend in FY2011 what was slated in FY2007 the deficit would be half of the size.  The graph below shows spending estimates for FY2011 in each of the last five administration budget proposals.

This year’s budget proposal increases FY2011 spending by more than $200 billion over what the Administration proposed for FY2011 last year – yet another piece of evidence of the budget creep phenomenon.