Aww c'mon Bucco. Who in any recent posts has assigned complete blame for the current runaway deficit spending and the exploding level of the national debt totally on George Bush? What good would it do to assign blame to a President that's retired to his ranch?

The facts are that a pattern of deficit spending and a growing national debt began on Bush's watch, in 2001 specifically. It has continued unabated into the Obama administration. If you want to assign blame to Congress, the first six years of the run of deficit spending and growing debt occurred in Republican Congresses and has continued for the last three years that the Democrats have had the majority.

If anything, the rate of deficit spending and debt growth has increased on the current Democratic watch. But it's tough to determine accurately how much was due to simple old spending on unfunded programs as opposed to war spending and the cost of trying to reverse the financial crisis.

It's a meaningless exercise to try to assign blame at this point. What's more important is who's going to take action, provide leadership, to begin to reverse our profligate spending and unsustainable debt levels? Is that person or persons currently in elected office? So far, it doesn't look that way to me.

By the way...how in only one post did this thread morph from considering the effects of special interest lobbying to who's responsible for the national debt? How about getting back to the lobbying question?