What is it Republicans Don't Want You to Remember?

Republican commenter Kristen suggests what a president inherits is meaningless. That we move on and forget about George Bush and what he did to this country's fiscal situation.  This is routine rhetoric from Bush enablers.

Trust me, myself along with 75% of the American people would love to forget about George Bush and his 8 years and we pretty much have. He was the most unpopular president since polling was invented. He went an entire second term without once having majority approval. He led us down a path of self-destruction, and the two years since his absence have been a rebuilding time for America. Unemployment is slowly dropping. The Dow is up 50%. GDP is in positive territory again. Budget deficits have been streamlined. And our standing in the world has greatly benefited from President Obama. Things are better than they were.  So on behalf of the American people, we would love to forgo reality and forget about Bush.  It's just there's a thing called responsibility.

What is it Republicans just want us to forget and move on from?

Oh yeah, that responsibility thing again.

We can't simply forget about Bush and move on.  Or better said, we can't fix today's budget mess without addressing the cause.  And that's what Republicans want.* They want their mess fixed, yesterday.  They want it solved and people to quit focusing on how and why we are in the shape we are in.  Like Kristen says, "[t]wo years later it's no longer a plausible excuse to blame Bush for the current state of the economy."

Except that's not true.  Only a fool would believe something like that.  Fifty-three percent of the $1.5+ trillion deficit we have today is from leftover George Bush policies.  In other words, problems the current president inherited from his predecessor.  Much to the dismay of Republicans like Kristen, inheritance is not meaningless and we just can't forget and move on if we want to fix what's wrong.  If it's so meaningless than why are Republicans all of a sudden, now that they aren't in the White House, so concerned with the deficit?

So yes, despite what Kristen Billy thinks or what Fox News tells him to think, the deficit we have today is largely a George Bush policy.  Sure the recession contributed greatly to it as well, but there is no greater contributor to the deficit than Bush's two terms.


* Actually what Republicans want more than anything is for people to think Barack Obama is to blame for the deficit when in fact it was handed to him along with two wars, an economy on the verge of collapse and a little Republican trend called "receivership." That's why they are so insistent that people not bring up Bush. Because if we don't bring up Bush the only other person to bring up is Obama. They want everything to be his to fix and nothing to be theirs.