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Jesse, I never said that Bush gave anyone 13 trillion dollars. Point is, he was handed a surplus and he gave it all back (Clinton balanced the budget the last three years of his term).

There was a SURPLUS in the federal budget of close to $250 billion, and that when he left office, there was a $1.3 trillion DEFICIT. That's a difference of $1.55 trillion.  Whatever the national debt is right now, the tax cuts, overwhelmingly favoring the top 1% incomes (who actually now pay a lower PERCENTAGE in taxes than the rest of us!), by this year has cost us $2.48 TRILLION.

Then there was the fact that the wars weren't added on the books (Bush always requested funding for the wars in emergency supplementals). When Obama took office, he did finally add them to the books, making our spending now look like this:



You can see that, without the Bush tax cuts or the wars, we would pretty much be back where we were on 2000. I also reject that the Dems had much to do for the current economic mess.  Both wars and the tax cuts were pushed through by Bush and the Republicans. They have the best of both worlds:  when they aren't in office, they spend all their time whining about the debt.  When they are in office, they do all they can to drive it up (apparently because they think that will stop the Dems from spending on social programs).