Jeff’s post made me remember this graphic, which apparently can’t get reblogged enough. Matthew Yglesias puts it together from David Leonhardt’s column in the New York Times.
Anyway:
I can’t tell if this is a joke or not. Obama was a Senator last year, right? And as both a Senator and Presidential candidate, he supported and voted for the massive bailouts that led to the $1.3 trillion dollar deficit, right? And he knows that these bailouts had nothing to do with tax cuts, right? And he didn’t vote to close down the Medicare drug program, right? And that drug program—while not properly funded—isn’t the reason we have a trillion dollar deficit, right? And none of these things require this, do they? So is he joking, or does he just think we’re fools?
The bailouts didn’t cause the deficit. (Note that they are a smaller piece of the the Bush Policies wedge, in red.)
The Bush tax cuts and his war, together with the economic downturn, for all intents and purposes, did.
I don’t think the point is that the Medicare drug bill caused the deficit, but that its passage reflected a lack of concern for controlling spending when it suited certain people’s interests.
