News items on the House vote on the 2005 budget--$2.41 trillion--have pointed to the party-line voting pattern, reinforcing the Ekelund-Thornton point about the GOP. Yet the rollcall shows 10 dissenting Republicans who voted against the budget, with at least one (Ron Paul) voting against it for the right reasons. (Paul even returned unused funds from his own congressional office.) Here is federal spending since 1895--a chart that leaves the impression that the government didn’t exist at all until after WW2. See the raw data.