Just when I thought that the Tea Party movement could not get any more ridiculous, I've found on the website of a Southern Tea Party candidate a claim that Bush and the Bush-era Republican Congress were liberals, and that that's why they contributed $6 trillion to the debt.
While Bush is frequently referred to as Bush Jr., in fact he was trying to be Reagan Jr. His policies - cutting the taxes on highest incomes; raising military spending; his "Axis of Evil" speech (compared to Reagan's "Empire of Evil" speech); his Preventive War doctrine (compared to Reagan's Peace through strength doctrine); his militant social conservatism; and his alliance between Texas Oil, Christian fundamentalists, and neo-conservatives; were all echoes of Reagan. He tried to be Reagan Jr., but he was at best Reagan's pale imitation and at worst his caricature. Bush had a way of maximizing everything that was wrong with Reagan and taking that wrong to the next level, without accomplishing even a fraction of what Reagan was able to achieve.
So, once again: The reason for Bush deficits was that he cut taxes on highest incomes without making corresponding cuts in civilian spending and while vastly increasing spending on the military. This destroyed the fiscal sanity that was achieved by Clinton administration and added $6 trillion in debt to America without creating promised prosperity and without creating promised jobs. This was not done by liberals any more than Reagan's borrow-and-spend policies were by liberals. This was done by conservative Republicans who tried to play Reagan and failed.
The deficit was still bigger in the first year of Obama because the taxes on highest incomes remained what they were under Bush; and the previous administration bequeathed Obama a vast economic crisis which Obama attempted to defeat through stimulus spending. Once the stimulus spending is finished, the deficit will return to what it was under Bush. The way to actually plug this hole in the budget is to restore taxes on higher incomes to what they were under Clinton. And to those who hate taxes or think that taxes are un-American or punish success: I was in the high-income bracket under Clinton and never had a problem paying taxes. Indeed I saw it as my civic responsibility.
The average American does not stand to lose from restoration of taxes on highest incomes. Instead this will cut the deficit, restore investor confidence, and bring investment capital that is now tied up in government bonds back into productive sectors of the economy. Clinton era produced America's greatest ever peaceful period of prosperity. Restoring the Clinton policies that worked so well for America will end America's economic nightmare of the last decade.