Deficit Complaints

When discussing the Tea Parties, I often read commentators complain that “the Tea Partiers criticize spending now, but where were they during the Bush years?”

I think this graph explains it pretty well:





Note how in the last year of the Bush presidency, the deficit was a tick over 400 billion dollars. That's pretty bad. But Bush was a piker compared to Obama's projected 1.75 to 1.85 trillion. Although 2008 was bad, 2009 is clearly in OMG! territory.