What's driving current and projected future deficits is spending.
That primarily is from entitlements which (except for Medicare Part D which is a relatively small portion of either the total spending or the total projected increase in spending) are not Bush era policies.
The part that is from Bush's policies is also primarily spending (and primarily non-military spending, although military spending is not insignificant as a contributor).
The tax cuts, even using static calculation of the reduction in revenue, ignoring the economic benefits of lower taxes, are small compared to the increase of spending.
The war in Iraq is a temporary expense, and costs less than the total of the bailout and stimulus spending (some of which was pushed by the Bush administration, some by Obama), and much less than the increase in entitlement spending over the years Ruffing and Horney are looking at (to 2019).
The war in Afghanistan is also temporary, and costs less than Iraq.
Spending increased from $1.8 tril to $3.8 tril (in the current budget proposal, actual spending will likely wind up at least very slightly more than that) so far this century. That's a $2tril a year increase. No measurement of the level of reduced revenue from the tax cuts, combined with the costs of the two wars, and even combined with the cost of the increase in non-war military spending, comes close to being a large fraction of $2tril a year. So its obvious the drivers of the higher deficits where to this point, and will be for near future, the increase in non-military spending. Yes a large portion of that non-military spending increase happened when Bush was president, so it can be called "Bush-era policies", but the important question is what policies, not who was president when they where implemented. And going forward they are Obama's policies not Bush's. (Except the very large portion that's from pre-Bush entitlements which is due to the policies of FDR, and LBJ, and the congresses of their times, and to a lesser extent other presidents and congresses who changed the programs later).
The policies that drove the deficits where the increases in spending. Obama has built on Bush's failures in this area, and is adding even more spending. He's taking the worst of Bush and making it worse. The fact that much of the current deficit can be connected to "Bush era policies" (but not "most of" since Bush didn't create the entitlements except the relatively small Medicare part D, and he was bashed from the Democrats on that one for not spending more government money on it), doesn't change the fact that the policies that caused the problem are in broad terms the same as Obama's current policies. |
