[AndyJackson]

I know we all like to dump all of this on Obama, but this all go a huge kickstart under Bush to pay for his invasion of Iraq, to pay off friends and buy off the opposition. The deep state went viral under GWB. That their appetite continued to grow under Obama is no surprise, but don’t let Bush off the hook for this mess.

[remember]

I know we all like to dump all of this on Obama, but this all go a huge kickstart under Bush to pay for his invasion of Iraq, to pay off friends and buy off the opposition. The deep state went viral under GWB. That their appetite continued to grow under Obama is no surprise, but don’t let Bush off the hook for this mess.

Agreed. It's hard to judge Obama because he was handed a once-in-a-generation financial crisis. Bush, on the other hand, was handed a once-in-a-generation surplus and arguably squandered it on the ill-advised war in Iraq. Perhaps the surplus was based on a bubble in tech, perhaps not. But as the following graph shows, we did indeed have a surplus:

The numbers are at http://www.econdataus.com/def19.html. As can be seen, the Gross Deficit (the change in the Gross Federal Debt) never quite turned positive but the Unified Deficit did. Now, even the Unified Deficit is set to hit nearly a trillion dollars per year for each of the next five years.