To further emphasize Doug’s putdown of BT’s Democratic talking points gibberish. BT wrote:

the debt mostly due to tax cut policies of republicans and southerners (more or less the same at this point), who hoped to ‘force the government to shrink’ by starving it of taxes. Great plan that was.

Except that Bush’s tax cuts, like Reagan’s, made revenues RISE, not shrink, by growing the economy. The problem is on the other side of the equation.

I remember back in the Reagan years when it was pointed out that if the Gubmint just held spending down to the rate of inflation, the budget would be balanced in a couple of years. But spending was never kept down. Reagan tried, and failed. Bush never tried and his Republican go-alongs never questioned. It is the blackest mark on their legacy. It was one chance in a century to derail the gravy train, and all they did was scream for more gravy.