Fiscal Conservatism

I'm hearing over and over that the deficit is rising under Obama. Tax and spend democrats are running amok with our hard earned cash, blah blah blah. I thought I'd give you some facts to ponder.

The deficit is rising under Obama but not because of spending. Spending is actually DOWN from previous administrations (ahem). Actually it's because revenue is down. The current global economic downturn has caused tax revenue to plummet.

The overall deficit picture looks like this...

According to the treasury department's Bureau of Public Debt, the federal deficit went from $5,728,195,796,181.57 on January 22, 2001 to $10,626,877,048,913.08 on January 20, 2009. Bear in mind that the allegedly fiscally conservative Republican Party ran this government for six of those eight years. Roughly two trillion of that debt was added after Democrats took over Congress in 2007.

Thank you Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove and the GOP. They added $5 trillion in debt in 8 years and now they lecture everyone else about fiscal responsibility.

So next time you're at a tea party protest, make sure you're holding up effigies of Bush and Cheney as socialists. Otherwise, you're just a partisan fool and not arguing anything principled about smaller government at all.