WASHINGTON – President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in federal spending since President Johnson created the “Great Society” of social welfare programs, a new report concludes.

Even setting aside spending on defense and homeland security, Mr. Bush remains the biggest-spending president in 30 years, states a report from the libertarian Cato Institute. Domestic spending shot up by 36% in his first term.

Government spending has grown 5% a year under Mr. Bush, compared to 1.5% under President Clinton and 1.9% under President George H.W. Bush. Mr. Bush has even topped the Carter years, when spending grew at a 4% annual clip.

While criticized by Democrats for wide-ranging spending cuts, the president’s proposed 2006 budget would not cut spending enough to change his place in history, concluded the paper’s author, Stephen Slivinski, Cato’s director of budget studies.

The spending has ballooned thanks to – not in spite of – a Republican-dominated Congress that has consistently passed budgets even greater than those requested by the president. For his part, Mr. Bush has declined to veto them.

While there are numerous budget rules that could be changed to help rein in spending, Mr. Slivinski accused senior House Republicans of fighting the changes.

“The GOP establishment in Washington today has become a defender of big government,” wrote Mr. Slivinski.

His policy analysis, titled “The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders,” argues that over the past decade Republicans have “reversed the revolution” that swept them into power in 1994 on a platform of fiscal conservatism.

Their first budget proposal in 1995 would have eliminated three Cabinet agencies and 200 federal programs. While some were eliminated, many have been growing. Combined spending on 101 of the largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27%, Mr. Slivinski found.

Single-party control of both branches of government has enabled large spending increases, he argues, because Congress is more willing to give the president what he wants, and he is less willing to veto their additions.

While mandatory spending on entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid has been growing, it is discretionary spending on programs such as education, energy, and defense that has grown fastest under Mr. Bush, outstripping entitlement spending in three of the past four years.

“The trend of years past when entitlement spending was the driver of budget growth has been reversed under Bush,” he wrote.

Reviewing government data, Mr. Slivinski found that only one of 14 major federal agencies – the Environmental Protection Agency – saw its real annual budget decline in Mr. Bush’s first term.

Mr. Slivinski argues that Republicans should change House rules to make it more difficult to pass spending increases. For example, they should raise the super majority needed to waive spending caps from three-fifths to two-thirds, or impose expiration dates on government programs and create a commission to review whether they remained effective and relevant.

Republicans responded that matters are improving.

A spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, Scott Milburn, emphasized that Mr. Bush’s proposal for the 2006 budget limits overall discretionary spending to less than the projected rate of inflation and reduces the growth of mandatory spending for the first time since 1997. The budget proposal also calls for terminations or major reductions in more than 150 programs, he noted.

“The president has consistently demonstrated an aggressive commitment to spending restraint,” he said. “The budget resolution approved by Congress reflects the president’s spending restraint and keeps us on track to meet his goal of cutting the deficit in half in five years.”

A spokesman for the House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Jim Nussle, a Republican of Iowa, said the cuts in the $2.56 trillion budget deal agreed to last week by the House and Senate negotiators is a step in the right direction. Still, the compromise sparked an outcry over spending cuts, including a reduction in federal funding for Medicaid of at least $15 billion.

“We’re the ones who are trying to get our hands around this, looking at the big picture of spending,” said the spokesman, Sean Spicer.

“We took the first step this year to get a handle on the mandatory spending such as Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ spending, that have been unchecked and on autopilot for years,” Mr. Spicer said. “Every attempt to reform them has been met with resistance from Democrats who say ‘you are cutting and slashing.'”