National Debt by President

I have been very critical of Obama for following Bush’s bailout policies. The over -reliance on tax cuts, for example, which do very little as an economic stimulus I thought were terribly ill-advised. And I believe that his reliance on so many of the economists that took us into this mess in the first place hurt what little stimulus he proposed. (Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, William Geithner, et. al).

However, having said that I still don't know how the people on the far right can say with a straight face that Obama is responsible for the huge deficits we have acquired over the last twenty years, or that the stimulus package did nothing to save us from a complete financial disaster.

Consider this chart — it shows the National Debt as a percentage of GDP. Look at the rises in the deficit during the Reagan/Bush I years and in the BushII years. The deficit clearly has gone up on Obama's watch (not nearly enough according to many economists) but his term is infinitesimal compared with others.

(Note: see zfacts.com, for the underlying data.)