Who’s responsible for our nation’s $14 trillion debt? Ed Morrissey from a Hot Air joins the debate today

It is been the singular issue driving the tea party movement for the last 3 years, our nation’s debt. At 14 1/2 trillion dollars and with the prospect, and the Barack Obama’s budget projection of another $10 trillion by the end of the decade, it’s not just a discussion of the faculty lounge. Clearly our nations sovereignty hangs in the balance, as well as your liberty. But who’s responsible for this? This past week and Morrissey at hot air has been following the left’s new narrative that it all belongs to George Bush. And while that may shock you conservatives, it’s gained a certain amount of traction.

Below you’ll find a chart put together by the New York Times that tries to visually demonstrate how George W. Bush’s policies have accounted for most of the debt accumulated over the last 10 years. When I 1st saw I saw all kinds of holes in it. But you take a look and tell me what you think. From Hot Air.

There is little question that 2 wars and a new entitlement program in Medicare part D have contributed to the growing debt. But the way the New York Times glosses over Obama’s contributions and projects a total debt for the young President less than the current deficit, you have to wonder how accurate this chart really is.  Ed Morrissey, with a business background, does a great job of deconstructing this chart and it’s worth noting.

There are plenty of issues with this chart, but let’s start with the notion that the “Bush tax cuts” cost the static-analysis price listed here.  Absent those tax cuts, we would not have had the recovery from 2003-7, which generated a rather hefty increase in federal revenues; we’ll return to that in a moment.  The actual revenue listed in this chart was what static analysis of the recovery would have brought into federal coffers, which is one of the main problems with static analysis.  It also conflates tax cuts with federal spending, which only makes sense if one starts from the premise that the people owe their government all of their income less any that the government arbitrarily allows them to keep.

The chart then tries to claim that Obama’s spending increases over the next 8 years (projected) will amount to just $1.44 trillion — less than the annual deficit these days.  Oddly, it doesn’t mention that the last Republican annual budget passed in Congress (FY2007) only had a $160 billion deficit, which tends to interfere with the narrative Fallows and the Times wants to build here.

Ed makes a great point when talking about static analysis of the Bush tax cuts. No economist would find it reasonable to assume that in the absence of the Bush tax cuts you would collect the same amount of revenue or more under higher tax rates. This is one of the reasons why in econometrics you use a variety of different models with hundreds of inputs to take into account behavior on the part of consumers under different circumstances. To blanket we assume that the federal government would collect more revenue from the same people with higher taxes, without also taking into effect how higher taxes affect in individuals propensity to consume, is sheer folly.

In fact as Ed points out in this chart revenues increased dramatically from 2003 2 2007 after the Bush tax cuts took effect. The New York Times chart also assumes what I believe to be a rather absurdly low cost for Obama care, when it’s more than reasonable to assume that a new government program will cost more than projected.

Obviously the times would like to lay all of this at the feet of George Bush. Obviously that would be incorrect. Go to Ed’s post and read the whole analysis.