Charting Political Blame for Deficit & Debt

Byron York has a piece about how Obama supporters, Democrats, etc. take it as an article of faith that all of our economic woes are due to "the past 8 years" (ie; under President Bush). He provides some numbers from the OMB to refute that charge. In an attempt to provide a picture of what he's talking about, I also went to the OMB for data and came up with the following:

York's analysis (bulleted by me):

* Revenues fell in Bush's first two years because of a combination of the tech bust and the start of the tax cuts. But then things took off...[for]...a 44 percent increase from 2003 to 2007. (Revenues slid downward a bit in 2008, and a lot in 2009, when the financial crisis sent the economy into a tailspin.)

* [T]he Bush administration ran up deficits of $158 billion in 2002; $378 billion in 2003; and $413 billion in 2004. Then, with revenues pouring in, the deficits began to fall...[to] $161 billion in 2007...[which], with the tax cuts in effect, was one-tenth of today's $1.6 trillion deficit....Deficits went up in 2008 with the beginning of the economic downturn -- and, not coincidentally, with the first full year of a Democratic House and Senate.

* When Bush took office in January 2001, the debt was about $5.7 trillion, according to Treasury Department figures....When Bush left office in January 2009, the debt was $10.6 trillion. He had increased the national debt almost....$5 trillion over both terms (...$2 trillion came under a Democratic Congress)....The debt stood at $10.6 trillion when Barack Obama took office in January 2009. Now, it's about $14.4 trillion. The president has increased the national debt nearly $4 trillion in his first two and a half years in office.