President Obama Set to Exceed President Bush’s Deficits

Brian Riedl / February 11, 2009

“First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history.” – President Barack Obama, February 9, 2009

President Barack Obama has recently begun denigrating Republican attempts to pare back the bloated “stimulus” bill by asserting that a party which oversaw a large increase in the national debt has no business lecturing anyone on fiscal responsibility.

It is true that, between 2002 and 2009, the budgets largely shaped by President George Bush will have run cumulative budget deficits of $3.35 trillion. This calculation credits the entire 2009 budget deficit and TARP costs to Bush , even though Obama will have signed most of the discretionary spending bills and overseen much of the TARP spending.

But Obama does not have much high ground. The “stimulus” bill alone will create more debt (approximately $1 trillion including interest costs), than Bush’s first three years of budget deficits combined ($948 billion). And adding the “stimulus” bill to a realistic budget baseline yields a projected 2010-2017 cumulative budget deficit of $8.4 trillion. – 2.5 times the size of President Bush’s deficits over the same 8-year time period. (more…)