The main drivers of our national debt – yep, still Bushonomics

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

If you listen to Willard "Mittens" Romney tell the story, the history of the world only began on January 20, 2009 — the day Barack Obama was inaugurated as president. All of human history which preceded that event does not exist in "Romney world." There is a reason for this framing — If the world began on January 20, 2009, Tea-Publicans are not responsible for the economic catastrophe they left to President Obama; they are miraculously absolved of all their sins. Hallelujah!

This is how Romney and the GOP "push forward" onto President Obama the consequences of Bushonomics, a lost decade of job growth, Repost: The Bush Years Were a Lost Decade, and the worst financial catastrophe since the Great Depression with the Bush Great Recession (which began in December 2007). "See! It's all Obama's fault." As crazy as this sounds, it actually works with low information and highly partisan voters. Like Agent Fox Mulder from the X Files, they "want to believe."

We are still living with the consequences of Bushonomics. Bush's massive tax cuts are still in place and were actually expanded with President Obama's middle-class tax cuts.

We are still incurring huge expenses for the War in Afghanistan and, despite the end of the War in Iraq, we still have advisors and a massive diplomatic presence there. Bush's "War on Terrorism" has actually been expanded under President Obama into Pakistan and Yemen, and the U.S. has has to deal with the consequences that followed from the Arab Spring uprising in the Muslim world.

The economic recovery from the Bush Great Recession has been slow largely due to Tea-Publican opposition to what we know works — Keynesian stimulus spending — and their demands to follow what we know doesn't work, conservative economics "austerity" at the state and local government level, depressing public sector employment.

All of this was put on the nation's credit card. Bush not only squandered a massive budget surplus but added $5 trillion to the national debt, and left a $1.3 trillion deficit for President Obama and an economy in free fall to deal with on January 20, 2009. No one has been asked to sacrifice, other than our military families, and no one has been asked to pay a little bit more through higher taxes. We are still living with the lasting consequences of Bushenomics.

But don't bother Tea-Publicans and Mittens with the facts.

Sahil Kapur at Talking Points Memo published this chart:

It is very similar to the chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that I have previously posted (the "parfait chart"). (h/t Chart by TPM’s Clayton Ashley).

As Sahil Kapur writes:

Under Obama’s watch the national debt has risen from roughly $10 trillion to $15 trillion, a record high. But to what extent are his decisions while in office to blame? The answer: very little. The vast bulk of the debt is the result of policies enacted during the Bush administration coupled with automatic increases in federal spending and decreases in tax revenue triggered by the economic downturn.

Those are economic facts of life known to experts but that often gets lost in the political debate (and which Obama’s opponents are willing to obscure). So with the GOP’s push to return the deficit to the center of the political conversation, here’s quick reminder of the basic facts that you may have forgotten.

As the chart [above] reveals, the main drivers of projected deficits over the next decade are the wars of the oughts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts and the so-called “automatic stabilizers” — unemployment insurance spending, lower tax burdens — built into existing policy to combat economic downturns. Recovery measures by Bush and Obama caused a short-term spike in deficits but have mostly phased out and thus represent only modest fractions of the national debt.

The numbers, which come from the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, assume national policy as of a year ago would be renewed. Thus, they don’t reflect expected peace dividends from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, or revised economic growth projections, and it assumes the Bush tax cuts will be renewed in their entirety — something President Obama has vowed will not happen, after he accepted a two-year extension of all the rates late 2010. But they broadly demonstrate that existing debt and projected deficits aren’t largely a consequence of Obama initiatives.

* * *

[Tea-Publican] calls for fiscal responsibility mask an agenda, enshrined in a number of GOP budget measures, that’s aimed at slashing spending on programs for the poor and elderly, increasing defense spending, and cutting taxes on the rich — a platform that would dramatically alter the scope and size of government services, but reduce deficits and debt slowly. Obama’s budget proposal is projected to yield lower deficits over the next decade than the GOP alternative.

President Obama and Democrats have insisted that further efforts to improve the nation’s fiscal outlook include new tax revenues. But the GOP, taking its cue from its lord and master Grover Norquist, take an absolutist approach: "never!" They still believe in the voo-doo economics of Bushonomics that failed so miserably, and that Romney has promised to double-down on.

UPDATE: As tax expert David Cay Johnston explained earlier this year,  "Romney’s Tax Plan is George W. Bush on Steroids". (h/t graphic The Ed Show).