The Bush tax cuts, plus TARP, plus Bush's stimulus program probably do come close to $2 trillion. Bush also ran federal spending from $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year during his tenure.

Were you for TARP ?

Were you for Bush's stimulus ?

Were you for Bush's tax cuts for the middle class ?

Were you for Bush's increased social spending ?

Were you for Obama's stimulus ?

Were you for Obama adding $500 billion to the federal budget in his first year ?

Are you for Obama's projected $9 trillion in added debt ?

Are you for Obama's health care spending increase of $1.5 trillion (at least) over a decade ?

Clinton added $1.5 trillion to the debt. Look it up. And Clinton's surplus would have evaporated in 2001 even if Clinton had still been president. If you recall, the dot-com bubble burst and we were entering a recession as Bush took office. Then there was the damage 9/11 did to our economy, deepening the recession. I don't say this to excuse Bush, because I don't agree with his fiscal policies. I say this only to correct your errors.

Bush added over $4 trillion to the debt. If I use your $1 trillion figure for the total of Bush's tax cuts over 8 years, Bush still would have added $3 trillion to the debt. This doesn't take into account any positive economic effects of the tax cuts. I repeat, reversing the Bush tax cuts won't come close to making up for our trillion dollar yearly budgetary shortfalls.

Your statement that Bush's tax cuts added nothing is not supported by the facts. The facts say the tax cuts spurred the economy. You're just spinning.

And because I was against the Iraq war, I don't feel the need to defend it. We didn't need to spend that money, which is in the neighborhood of a trillion.

Obama is on pace to add $9 trillion to the debt. This is the guy YOU SUPPORT, which makes your entire argument disingenuous.

"The Bush tax cuts: When the Bush tax cuts sunset at the end of 2010, the previous administration will have left the government holding the bag for well over $2 trillion in lost revenue. The extraordinary debt and deficits accrued during Bush’s tenure have been compounded by the implosion of the financial system. In addition, the estimated eventual costs of the costly, unnecessary, and counterproductive Iraq war are now in the trillions to say nothing of the costs of more than six years of failure in Afghanistan. What have they done for America?

As David Cay Johnston, a former New York Times reporter, recently noted, based on data compiled by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, by the time the Bush tax cuts expire next year, people in the top one percentile of annual household incomes will have received 23.5 percent of all the savings in the cuts. The combined savings of the bottom three income brackets was less than that."

OBL, with the help of Bush/Cheney/Boehner and their republican cheerleaders have brought America to its knees. Mission Accomplished indeed.

King, we all understand about deficits and government spending and all of that. What we also realize is that consumers and businesses are scared and not spending. Do tax cuts spur spending? Sure. But I doubt it in this economy.

The Bush tax cuts took, at a minimum, $1 trillion away from the Treasury. It created nothing, it produced nothing, it stimulated nothing.

Clinton not only balanced the budget but left Bush a surplus to exploit. So, every president of your lifetime didn't run up the debt.

And you can say this all day long…

"Bush's major sin was not cutting taxes. It was increasing spending by 33% at the same time."

..but it's still misguided. Bush had the opportunity to do something with the Clinton surplus…you know, like paying down those entitlement projection shortfalls …..or even paying down the national debt. But no…..conservative hacks like Greenspan encouraged the tax giveaways. Totally irresponsible.

Why is it that conservatives never mention the $1 1/2 trillion wasted on wars of choice and neo-con imperialism?

In order to balance the budget and begin paying down the debt via taxation alone (achieve fiscal responsibility), we WOULD have to increase taxes to the highest rates in American history. That was my point, and nothing you said countered that. Merely reversing the Bush tax cuts won't even come close to accomplishing it. The Bush tax cuts were about $58 billion in 2001, growing to about $188 billion in 2009. That is a drop in the bucket compared to our ongoing structural deficits. It's the standard liberal talking point (used as an excuse not to address the real problem), but it won't accomplish much. Not to mention that raising taxes during a recession/depression is dumb. Both Hoover and FDR proved that, and economists would agree. Bush's major sin was not cutting taxes. It was increasing spending by 33% at the same time.

You ask, "walter and Tbomb make excellent points. Would you rather that Americans endure a massive Depression…rather than have government intervene as the demand-producer of last resort? Would you?"

You are missing the whole point. It's the yearly debt accumulation that is going to lead to the biggest Depression this country has ever seen, and you want to close your eyes to it. You believe, as I said before, that the answer to maxing out all your credit cards is to get more credit cards. It's insane. Every single presidential administration in my lifetime has run up the debt. They all found some excuse to do it. Bush used a recession and war. Democrats, Republicans, it doesn't matter. They've all done it. And here you are, arguing with me for showing where that will lead. How you can defend such governmental irresponsibility is beyond me, and Obama is on track to be the biggest offender of them all. Enjoy your health care reform as our entire country goes bankrupt. Government expands as much as WE LET IT. It doesn't have to expand. That's a myth.

I have written posts in the past on how to balanced the budget too, so don't tell me I haven't offered any solutions. What are your solutions, other than raising taxes to the highest levels in history, having the government take over everything, and destroying the economy ? Nearly every major Obama proposal is a job killer, yet somehow you support him. I don't get it. I'm not being partisan, I'm being realistic. We need to make some hard choices, and the longer we wait to make them, the harder they are going to be. I know it's fun to live in fantasyland, but fantasies are not true, and it's all going to come crashing down around our ears very soon.

Here's an idea for you, about how to pay for health care reform, if that is now supposed to be a "right." Cut federal spending by an amount equal to the cost of health care reform, every year (and do not cut Medicare. That's part of the "right," right ?). If it's that important, that's what we should do, rather than burdening the taxpayers more and more and more, leading to disaster. I could design a more fiscally responsible health care reform package in a week than Congress has designed in a year, and I'm not even an expert in that field. We are being led by a ship of fools. I choose not to follow.

But you offer no viable solutions…at least none that I saw.

You mention that the health reform bill will require tax increases…but you don't acknowledge that any increases will be on a tiny, very wealthy, group of Americans.

And this….

"Liberals would say increase taxes to levels unprecedented in American history."

..is totally incorrect. U.S. income and capital gains tax rates are at their lowest in a generation. How, then, would moving the tax schedules back to Clinton-era numbers be "unprecedented" ?

walter and Tbomb make excellent points. Would you rather that Americans endure a massive Depression…rather than have government intervene as the demand-producer of last resort? Would you?

You talk about government spending, about cutting it. Here's the biggest perplexity of your post……what would you suggest should be cut?

"Smart way out"?? Should Americans all have to have their standard of living rolled back 60 years to protect that handful of very wealthy beneficiaries of the Bush years?

One more…

"Such tax increases would also have a business-killing, dampening effect on our economy at a time when unemployment is already skyrocketing and we're trying to climb out of a recession. This is known as the stupid way out."

That assumes that tax increases on the wealthiest kill jobs….and the opposite….tax decreases create jobs. Neither side of that assumption is reality-based. Slight tax increases under Clinton resulted in 20 million jobs…..historic Bush tax cuts, mainly on the most affluent….have resulted in 7 million jobs being lost.

Tax rates are not really the cause/effect engine of jobs, as you suggest….it's much more complex than that. Outsourcing, trade rules, corporate dominance over the government, etc….play significant roles. It's taken 30 years for Reagan's Revolution to bear it's ugly fruit…and it seems like you are suggesting we double down on that Revolution.

so your suggestion for the way out of this mess is to stop or reduce the spending of the only person that is spending, which is the federal government. Wouldn't that further tighten up the economy?

that doesn't make sense