Your average poorly informed righty (the willfully blind-types like the author of this article) will reliably tell you that our current fiscal straits are the result of "anyone and everyone but Bush".
It's funny how these willfully-blind neo-cons always ignore Bush's actions upon taking office in 2000 and their effects on the US economy.
They never mention the Partnership for Prosperity, signed on September 6, 2001.
Nor do they mention the provision in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 that allowed banks to accept the Mexican Matricula Consular card as valid ID to open US bank accounts, while allowed Mexican illegal aliens to obtain US credit cards, auto, home and business loans.
Prior to Bush, this was illegal by law in the US.
They never mention the New Alliance Task Force, formed in 2003.
The NATF is a broad-based coalition of 62 members, including the FDIC, Mexican Consulate, 34 banks, community-based organizations, federal bank regulatory agencies, government agencies, and representatives from the secondary market and private mortgage insurance (PMI) companies.
Their goal was to open the Mexican illegal alien market to US banks and visa-versa using low-cost remittances as the bait. As Bush's 2002 speeches show he was talking about hundreds of billions of U.S. tax dollars going to directly benefit millions of Mexican illegal aliens.
The NATF was organized into four working groups that were tasked with the following goals:
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They never mention the American Dream Downpayment Act which gives Mexican illegal aliens US taxpayer dollars for them to use as the down-payment for the houses Bush's Wall Street banker buddies were financing through sub-prime loans.
They never mention Bush hobbling border and interior immigration enforcement.
Worksite arrests of illegal aliens fell some 97 percent, from 2,859 in 1999 to 159 in 2004. Investigations targeting employers of illegal immigrants fell more than 70 percent, from 7,637 in 1997 to 2,194 in 2003. Arrests on job sites fell—precipitously, from 17,554 in 1997 to 445 in 2003. Fines levied for immigration-law violations fell from 778 in 1997 to 124 in 2003. Notices of intent to fine employers fell from 865 in 1997 to just 3 in 2004.
Nor do they mention Bush signing the Social Security Totalization Agreement with Mexico in 2004, which would have allowed Mexican illegal aliens to collect US Social Security benefits for the time they worked illegally in the US. Not only for themselves, but also for their families back home in Mexico, even if they had never stepped foot in America.
Of course, given Bush's record, if I were a Bush lick-spittle, I too, would do everything in my power to blame "anyone and everyone but Bush".
While the items you cite comprise the worst of Bush's presidency, their impact on (a) unemployment, (b) overall federal tax revenues, and (c) overall federal spending are minor.
When it comes to the current fiscal situation of the federal government, most of the blame falls on the massive increases in entitlement spending (Bush is complicit with Kennedy and the democrats that he embraced even while they were stabbing him in the back and screaming that the massive increases were draconian in their cruel inadequacy, and simultaneously savaging him for ballooning the deficit) in the areas of medicare/prescription drug benefits, federal education spending, and other programs.
Tax revenues increased as the economy grew for the first six years of Bush's term in office, but deficits grew because of bipartisan lust for even greater spending growth. Once the Pelosi/Reid congress took the reins in 2007, the economic growth stopped and the wheels predictably came off. The media, also predictably, covered for the democrats and blamed Bush.