Bush isn’t blameless, especially given his reluctance to exercise the veto, but the budget (and with it the economy) began to go to hell once the Democrats took Congress in 2006, (with their spending policies starting to manifest themselves a year later), and totally went to pieces with Obama’s election and Porkulus.
I’d guess 90% of the population is hopeless when it comes to understanding the budget process in this country, and I expect that’s by design. Jerkwad Clinton can smugly claim to have passed “the last four balanced budgets this country’s seen” - all while acquiescing to Newt Gingrich’s budgets.
And Obama can claim that he’s stuck with spending “baked into the budget by Bush”, when what he’s really got is spending baked into the budget starting with that Democrat congress from 2006, and maintained in place by continuing resolution due to the fact that the Reid Senate hasn’t even thought about a budget in almost three years.
The last Republican budget had a $168B deficit. The least since the Clinton era $77B deficit. (No, there was no surplus.)
Sadly, people in the United States cannot do math.