The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has this nifty chart with an explanation:
CBPP:
A number of policymakers and pundits — most recently House Minority Leader John Boehner — blame Obama Administration policies for the large deficits we confront. But the numbers tell a very different story.
As my colleague Jim Horney and I have explained, the causes of today’s large deficits lie largely outside the Administration’s control. Two weeks before President Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the 2009 deficit would exceed $1 trillion. CBO also warned that if we continued the policies the Obama Administration inherited, including the Bush tax cuts and funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, deficits would average over $1 trillion a year in 2010-2019.....
(Did you see that word "inherited" in the text from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities?)
.... Rep. Boehner and others are wrong to let the Bush Administration off the hook. If we hadn’t enacted unaffordable tax cuts, fought two wars on borrowed money, and created an expensive new drug benefit as part of Medicare without paying for it, we’d be in much better shape.
Note to Republicans interested in more tax cuts:
Haven't you and your party created enough damage????????
I'd suggest that everyone read the article at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (see link above) and send it to your Republican members of Congress. You might also want to send the article to any obnoxious Republican relatives/neighbors.