Via the NY Times, from the CBO:

Bush wasted more on his two wars alone than Obama’s net spending increases combined.

His tax cuts, mostly for the rich, squandered even more than that.

Not to mention that this chart does not even show the fiscal impact of the economic states each president oversaw; Bush’s recession has cost us a great deal more than is shown here; he doubled unemployment just before Obama came into office, and presided over the loss of millions of jobs. Obama at least halted the plummet, limited half by his own unwillingness to do what was needed and half by Republicans kicking, screaming, and dragging the country away from any solid recovery effort.

Yes, Bush was in office for eight years, and Obama is running at the two-and-a-half year mark. However, it is also worth nothing that Obama was forced to make most of his new spending because of the disastrous economy Bush burdened him with–otherwise Obama would have only increased spending by a few hundred billion.

Even so, were Obama to continue to spend as he has (and there is no indication that he will), he would still not spend as much as Bush did over an 8-year period.

Now, the debt did explode–but under Bush. It’s like the night shift guy set the building on fire at 7:30 a.m. and handed the building over to the morning shift guy at eight, and then tried to make everyone believe the other guy started the fire.

Not that any of this is a surprise, but unless it gets pointed out every once in a while, the lie that is so often repeated will go unchallenged and everyone will “know” that Obama got us into this mess, and thus buy more into the myth that tax cuts and land wars in Asia did not do the most damage.