've long been a lukewarm supporter of George W. Bush. I was a Forbes supporter earlier this year, thus keeping my record of backing four losers in the past four GOP presidential primaries: Kemp in 1988, Buchanan in 1992, Forbes in 1996, and Forbes in 2000. I'm the Woody Allen of American politics: Nobody wants to join a club or campaign that I'm a member of.

I suspect that conservatives who believe that W. is the long-awaited messiah for the conservative movement are likely to be disappointed. We have here another case of the triumph of hope over experience. If Republicans sweep the White House and Congress on Tuesday, I'm betting the budget will grow faster over the next four years than it has grown over the past four.

The GOP is not an anti-big government party any longer and the Texas governor is not an anti-big-government candidate. Just listen to what he has said in the debates!

So, why Bush? The big enchilada issue to voters in this election is: Who can keep this bullish prosperity going? This expansion began 18 years ago under the policies of Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut taxes, conquered inflation, ended the ruinous build-up of the welfare state, and promoted pro-business policies. The result: the greatest era of wealth creation in world history. The Dow Jones has soared from 800 in 1982 to more than 10,000 today. To match that over the next 20 years, the Dow would have to go to 120,000 by 2020. We can do it if we pursue the right economic agenda.

Gov. Bush is head and shoulders above Mr. Gore when it comes to two critical economic issues.

First, on taxes, Bush will cut them; Gore probably won't — at least not enough that you would notice. Bush has proposed dedicating about one-third of the budget surplus to tax cuts. (That should be 100%.) Still, he would cut the top income tax rate from 39.6 to 33 percent and the lowest rate from 15 to 10%. Bush would eliminate the unfair death tax and the even more indefensible marriage-penalty tax. The Clinton and Gore administration inexplicably vetoed tax bills that would have ended these taxes this year.

Instead of cutting taxes, Al Gore wants to launch one of the biggest spending sprees in recent memory. The precise total for Al Gore's risky spending schemes comes to $1.64 trillion through 2010, or almost $15,000 for every household in America. Wouldn't you rather just have this money to spend yourself? Al Gore makes Michael Dukakis and George McGovern look like penny pinchers in comparison.

There's one other big economic issue that separates Gore and Bush. That is Social Security reform. Bush wants to permit young workers to invest at least a portion of their payroll taxes in private IRA accounts. This would give even the lowest-income workers a chance to become owner/capitalists. The rate of return on Social Security is a puny 1 to 2 percent. Young workers know they can do a lot better than that investing themselves. Gore opposes private accounts and wants to preserve the New Deal era pay-as-you go system that will soon be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Gore says private accounts are "too risky."

A modernized private-retirement-account system for Social Security would give workers more economic freedom and more individual choices about their own retirement future. Combine this with tax rate reductions and America's economy can continue to be the wonder of the world for the next decade at least. George W. Bush's economic plan is visionary, progressive, and pro-growth.

As an economist, I'm most often asked: What could bring this U.S. economy to a screeching halt? The answer: A binge of new spending and taxes out of Washington. That's why Al Gore is economically dangerous. His trillion and a half dollar agenda to nationalize day care, health care, education, crime fighting, transportation policy, health care, zoning, and traffic patterns is the nanny state back with a vengeance.

We might be able to survive four years of Gore's government expansions. But why take that risk?