Jeb Bush says brother’s Cabinet overspent during White House years

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush put some distance Thursday between himself and his brother, saying the federal government probably spent too much during the eight years former President George W. Bush was at the helm.

But the former governor, who is weighing a White House bid himself, also embraced a key part of his brother’s national security legacy, saying the NSA’s phone-snooping program is a critical intelligence tool that’s never been abused.

“Sure, I think that in Washington, during my brother’s time, Republicans spent too much money,” Mr. Bush said, according to CNN, at an event in Concord, New Hampshire, in response to a question on if there was an issue where there’s space between himself and his brother. “He could have used the veto power. He didn’t have line item veto power, but he could have brought budget discipline to Washington, D.C.”

Mr. Bush said, however, that it seems “kind of quaint” now that “budget deficits and spending went up astronomically” during President Obama’s tenure.

As he lays the groundwork for a potential White House run, Mr. Bush has readily acknowledged that potential voters might be skeptical given his family history in the White House. His father, George H.W. Bush, was the 41st president.

But he’s defended his family, and said Thursday he supports a full reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which was a crucial part of his brother’s post-9/11 security agenda.

“I think the Patriot Act needs to be reauthorized,” Mr. Bush told WMUR. “There is not a shred of evidence that anybody’s civil liberties have been violated by it, and it’s already been proven that it’s constitutional. And there is ample evidence that it has protected us.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are weighing whether to extend several parts of the law due to expire at the end of May, including Section 215, which the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have used to justify the NSA’s data surveillance programs.

Other Republicans siding with Mr. Bush on the NSA include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a 2016 presidential candidate.

But Mr. Bush’s defense of the law puts him on the opposite side of the issue from Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who held the Senate floor for more than 10 hours Wednesday in what he described as an attempted filibuster to highlight his opposition to renewing Section 215.

Democrats have hammered Mr. Bush for recently equivocating on whether he would have authorized the 2003 invasion and have been all too eager to paint him as a duplicate of his brother.

“Jeb Bush is desperately trying to prove there’s ’space’ between him and his brother where none exists,” said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Holly Shulman.

But Mr. Bush said Thursday the world is “radically different” than when his father and even his brother were elected.

“My dad was president in 1988; my brother was president in 2000,” he said on WKXL radio.

“If it’s all about the past, it’s all about whether the Bushes are going to break the Adams family in terms of the number of people that are president. That’s a loser — I totally get that,” he said. “I think people have a right to question me, and I’ll have every opportunity to convince ’em of who I am and what’s in my heart.”