On the recordJanuary 26, 2010
I think it's important to look back and to determine where this deficit started. And when you look back, it's back in the Clinton administration when we began to turn around the budget here in the United States, where we began to go from deficits to surpluses and we were actually paying down on the debt. At the beginning of the Bush administration, they had a choice: Should we continue paying off that debt, should we continue paying down the debt in order to support future generations, or, do we want to gain short-term political gain? I think Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration chose that short-term political gain, because we know what they did. They decided to pursue tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, we engaged in two different wars that were not paid for, and we engaged in reckless spending. And that led to what? The greatest deficits that we have ever seen in the United States.
Source
govinfo.gov
