A defender of the administration e-mails, making this point: In the budgets for which Bush has been responsible, “the non-defense, non-homeland security increases have been 6 percent; 4.7 percent; and (a proposed) 2.0 percent. People may disagree with some of the particulars, but this record hardly qualifies as ‘fiscally reckless.’” These are good numbers to have. But they don’t satisfy me. In previous wars, as Mitch Daniels noted in the Washington Post a year or two ago, the government actually cut back on non-defense spending to compensate for the costs of war. It set priorities, in other words. (It focused on the legitimate functions of the federal government, I’d say.) If Bush had, soon after 9/11, sent up a war budget that included domestic spending cuts, I believe that he would have had the support of his party, his country, and (at least) several Democrats.