Yeah, but it's the Congress that passes the legislation that permits the spending. The President's only role is to either sign what's been passed, or veto the bill(s). You can try to blame everything on the Democrats, but the Republicans have been in firm control of the House for more than a year and during that time the national debt increased by another trillion dollars. A GOP-controlled House of Representatives is proving to be no better, no more fiscally responsible, than the Democrats who preceded them.

Generally, the Congress makes sure to set content in the bills they send to the President, or the timing of when they pass the legislation, to make it very difficult for the President to actually veto a bill. They either include stuff in the bill that the POTUS and his party want, or they time sending the bill up in such a way that if the bill were vetoed, the government would shut down or some other dire event would result.

Think of all the legislation that was passed at the absolute last minute just in the last few months.

• Congress put off increasing the debt limit so long that we lost our AAA credit rating as the result.

• Congress never would reach agreement on spending cuts, passing it off to a super committee, who then couldn't reach agreement themselves, the result being some very undesirable "automatic" budget cuts (like slashing the military budget to the point that even Obama's Secretary of Defense says the result will be irreversible weakening of our national defense).

• Even this last "continuing resolution" to fund the continued operation of the government was put off until most of those who voted were on their way out the door for Christmas vacation, not to return to Washington for about three weeks. Had the resoultion not been passed, the government would have shut down.

No, I'm not blaming any particular political party--they're both at fault! But the Congress is the primary source of our fiscal problems, not the President.