Deficit reduction

If you said a year ago that a Democratic President would talk about having a deficit of more than $500 billion in the last year of his term, I'd assume that the President would be on his to losing an election in Mondalian style.

Bloomberg: His budget will increase taxes on the wealthy and cut spending for the war in Iraq to lower the budget deficit to $533 billion, according to administration officials.

Obama is treated as a deficit hawk because he is going halve the deficit down to a mere half trillion dollars.

The budget deficit

Take a look at the graph above and then explain to me how the Republicans are the party of "fiscal conservatism". We truly misunderestimated W. Bush and his ability to turn the Clinton surplus into the largest deficit in history. Remember Bush came to office saying that we needed the tax cut because the surplus was too big.

Bush and Congressional Republicans insisted on massive tax cuts for the super-rich at the same time that we've spent $100s of billions in Iraq. Combine that with a complete indifference to energy independence and total ineptitude in fiscal oversight- I give you the Bush years.