What’s the Republican Economic Legacy?

A national fiscal burden that now stands at $455,000 per household, that’s what.

Who or what is to blame? Undoubtedly conservatives will point to entitlement and pork-barrel spending as the culprit while seeking to blame liberals, but let’s take a look at some numbers:

This little counter shows the up-to-date cost of the war in Iraq. As I write this, our government has spent more than 500 billion dollars of taxpayer money to fund the war in Iraq, and as I’ve previously noted, the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and defense spending are responsible for 85% of the rise in our nation’s budget deficits. Entitlement spending, on the other hand, accounts for only 9% of the increase, a fact that belies the argument that entitlement spending is the cause of our budget woes.

What’s more, out of control spending under George “Big Government” Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress (at least from 2001-2006) has resulted in roughly 45% of our nation’s debt being controlled by foreign governments and interests.

$455,000 per household – that’s what Republicans have left us with, and that’s the hole we have to dig ourselves out of in the coming years. So much for Republicans being fiscally responsible.