Oct. 19--George W. Bush rode into Washington almost eight years ago astride the horse of smaller government. He will leave it this winter having overseen the biggest federal budget expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt seven decades ago.

Not since World War II, when the nation mobilized to fight a global war against fascism and recover from the Great Depression, has government spending played as large a role in the economy as it does today.

This time, it is a rapid mobilization against another global enemy -- Islamist terrorism -- that lies behind much of the growth. But rising spending on discretionary domestic programs has also played its part.

"We have now presided over the largest increase in the size of government since the Great Society," said Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate vying to replace Mr. Bush in the White House, during the first presidential debate.

That, in fact, was an understatement. No president since FDR -- who offered a New Deal to pull the nation out of the Great Depression and then fought World War II -- has presided over as rapid a growth in government when measured as a percentage of the total economy.

And now comes the Next Deal -- the rapid-fire series of programs announced in recent weeks to deal with a global financial crisis that few Americans even understand. It has begun with a decision to use $700 billion in taxpayer money to buy up financial assets and take an ownership stake in the nation's largest banks and could be followed by a stimulus program of up to $300 billion driven by congressional Democrats.

As a result, Mr. Bush already is the first president in history to implement budgets that crossed the $2 trillion a year and $3 trillion a year marks. His final budget, which comes to an end Sept. 30, conceivably could near $4 trillion, depending on the final tab for the financial rescue.

Mr. Bush campaigned in 2000 on a pledge to reduce the size of government, continuing a trend that had been under way since the end of the Cold War. But since terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, he has done what he thought was necessary to keep the country safe. That commitment became a centerpiece of his 2004 convention speech: "Whatever it takes."

The White House does not contest the numbers showing near-record growth in the size of government on its watch, but says it has no regrets about the president's decision to eschew a limited government agenda in favor of homeland security and defense spending.

"What we have presided over is the security of the nation -- the creation of the Homeland Security Department and the fighting of two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We don't apologize for the spending needed to protect Americans," White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said.

"If somebody wants to be critical of those efforts, go for it. Have fun. It's a silly point to make," Mr. Fratto said. "America would not be better off had this president not decided to greatly expand the protection of the homeland and to take the fight to the enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Period."

There has been no repeat of a Sept. 11-style attack on U.S. soil, a fact that may turn out to be one of this president's enduring legacies.

But an examination of numerous government reports over the past few years shows the administration has had difficulties in stewarding the taxpayer money spent on the mission -- a total of more than $5 trillion on wars abroad and anti-terrorism efforts at home since 2002.

Of that, hundreds of billions was misspent, in large part due to a broken contracting system, according to congressional oversight reports.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reviewed 700 projects and found $1.1 trillion in spending from 2002 to 2008 that was plagued by "significant waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement."

Domestic spending also rose in almost every category as the White House, bargaining to get what it wanted for defense and national security, accommodated what even its supporters see as wasteful domestic spending in Congress.

"Basically, we have had in the past eight years an unending growth in government and ever higher increases in the level of spending," said Phil Gramm, a former Republican senator from Texas and chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs from 1995 to 2000.

Mr. Bush has paid a heavy political price for his most costly domestic programs.

A series of large White House-backed spending projects -- the 2002 Farm Bill, No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D -- alienated the conservative brain trust and power base. And as grievous pet projects -- symbolized by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens' $320 million "Bridge to Nowhere" -- went unchecked by the president, the grass roots became infuriated.

The Bush White House "didn't focus on spending," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "They didn't make it a priority. And this predates September 11. It just wasn't on the list of things they were going to do."

Government has also been growing in less noticeable ways.

The increasing outsourcing of government functions to private contractors that began in the 1990s under President Clinton's "reinventing government" initiative was continued by Mr. Bush. It was here, after the Sept. 11 attacks, that a new vista of government waste opened wide.

Contractors have squandered billions of taxpayer dollars, gaining entry into federal coffers with promises to detect terrorists, build or supply better war machinery and weapons, or protect airports, according to numerous reports by agency inspectors general.

In the high-tech age of complex computer networks and data-mining systems, the government has been unable to keep the contractors accountable, those same reports show. The federal bureaucracy is too slow and too unsophisticated to even know, often, what exactly it has asked a contractor to do.

For example, the Transportation Security Administration in 2002 contracted for a high-speed national computer network but had no idea how it would work, so it was pegged as a $1 billion expenditure. A few years later, the price had grown as high as $5 billion.

To round out the circle, the government has hamstrung its own ability to keep track of the spending by starving its watchdogs -- the inspectors general -- of resources and personnel.

The Bush administration sends mixed messages about its grasp of the contracting problem.

Jim Nussle, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), calls complaints about contracting oversight "a very appropriate criticism."

But Mr. Nussle's deputy director for management, Clay Johnson, while acknowledging room for improvement, sounded a different note.

"I think we manage procurement in the federal government today better than ever before," Mr. Johnson said.

After Sept. 11, the government's penchant for spending was given new life by the rise of homeland security and counterterrorism.

A top Department of Homeland Security official recently said that his goal was to make sure the government never again suffered from "a lack of imagination" on potential threats.

"We don't know what all the hazards are right now. We don't know what all the threats are," said Bradley Buswell, deputy undersecretary for science and technology at DHS, during a recent speech at George Washington University.