James Kwak wrote a great article, Budget Sense And Nonsense, in the Huffington Post.

Kwak, co-author of The Baseline Scenario, a leading blog on economics and public policy, has written a really good explanation of the Obama budget and how the GOP created the Deficit Crisis. I’ve taken this clip out of the article, but it is really worth reading the whole thing.

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Speaking of taxes, how did we get into this deficit mess in the first place? You’ve no doubt seen this chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities or something similar before, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And what is it in the president’s proposed budget that the Republicans are aiming at? The plan to let the Bush tax cuts lapse for people making more than $250,000 per year. In other words, the problem with the Obama budget is that the deficits are too high, and the solution is to cut taxes. Huh? Sam Stein pointed out the same issues in December. Yet since Ronald Reagan, a large proportion of the electorate has become wired to believe that deficits are always the product of excess government spending, so the facts bear repeating. The fiscal situation is actually very simple. The budget was in surplus when President Clinton left office, although there was already the prospect of budget-busting Medicare deficits in the long-term future.