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As can be seen above, CBO’s errors in forecasting played a large role in the demise of the projected surpluses. CBO had kept counting on a gusher of capital gains revenue — and then obviously failed to predict the recession of 2008.

But Obama’s policies also played a big role during his presidency. Using the CBO data for the years 2009-2011, here’s a very rough calculation of the contribution to the deficit. To keep things simple, we did not try to allocate interest expense, and we did not include categories of spending or taxes that were difficult to allocate.

The 2009 fiscal year is especially hard because that budget year is so much of an amalgam of Bush and Obama policies; we essentially split the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program between the two of them. Since this is not intended to be exact, but illustrative, we have rounded numbers and percentages:

2009:

Economic/technical differences: $570 billion (46 percent)

Bush policies: $330 billion (27 percent)

Obama policies: $325 billion (27 percent)

2010:

Economic/technical: $815 billion (51 percent)

Bush: $225 billion (14 percent)

Obama: $565 billion (35 percent)

2011:

Economic/technical: $720 billion (46 percent)

Bush: $160 billion (10 percent)

Obama: $685 billion (44 percent)

Clearly, a huge part of the deficit problem — about half — stems from the recession and forecasting errors. But Obama’s policies represent a big chunk as well. (We would welcome suggestions for fine-tuning these numbers.)

Now one could argue, as Obama’s defenders do, that his policies to combat the recession were intended to be temporary. But he has also supported permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for Americans making less than $250,000, which by itself will shrink federal revenues for years to come. That means these are no longer Bush’s tax cuts, but Obama’s.

Moreover, an important part of Obama’s legacy — the health-care law — has not even taken full effect yet. The CBO calculated virtually no impact on the deficit in the first 10 years after enactment, but all bets are off after that.

Finally, Obama claims that “we have actually seen the federal government grow at a slower pace than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower.” We regret to say that the president is repeating a widely debunked column that appeared on MarketWatch earlier this year. We devoted three columns to the column’s faulty logic, and FactCheck.org and the Associated Press also said it was bunk. (PolitiFact said it was “half true.”)

Not to get too deep in the weeds again, but the claim is based on treating 2009 (as we said, an amalgam of Bush and Obama policies) as actually Bush’s year, and then ignoring Obama’s proposed spending increases in the future. Such calculations help to dramatically shrink the growth of spending under Obama relative to other presidents.

The Pinocchio Test

We are not trying to make excuses for the fiscal excesses of the Bush administration — and Congress — in the last decade. But at some point, a president has to take ownership of his own actions.

Obama certainly inherited an economic mess, and that accounts for a large part of the deficit. But Obama pushed for spending increases and tax cuts that also have contributed in important ways to the nation’s fiscal deterioration. He certainly could argue that these were necessary and important steps to take, but he can’t blithely suggest that 90 percent of the current deficit “is as a consequence” of his predecessor’s policies — and not his own.

As for the citing of the discredited MarketWatch column, we have repeatedly urged the administration to rely on estimates from official government agencies, such as the White House budget office. It is astonishing to see the president repeat this faulty claim once again, as if it were an established fact.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-claim-that-90-percent-of-the-current-deficit-is-due-to-bush-policies/2012/09/26/e9bfbcd0-077e-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html

Obama’s claim that ‘90 percent’ of the current deficit is due to Bush policies

“Over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

krose wrote:What's interesting is that the statement Kessler is claiming to refute...

Obama’s claim that ‘90 percent’ of the current deficit is due to Bush policies

... is itself false, because it isn't what the president actually said. He said:

“Over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

Nowhere in the statement that was actually made is any mention of "Bush policies." He lists several examples of spending that wasn't paid for, and then the economic crisis. Sure, those are mostly Bush policies that are all still ongoing, but he did not claim the economic crisis was a "Bush policy," or even the result of Bush policies.

As someone who dwells on details and technicalities in these articles, perhaps some introspection is in order, and Kessler should award himself a few growing noses. (On another technicality, Obama's words, "the last four years," would have extended back to September of 2008.)

Barack Obama says he's responsible for just 10 percent of budget shortfalls

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired on Sept. 23, 2012, President Barack Obama blamed the Bush administration for much of the nation's recent debt.

"Over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," Obama said. "Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10 percent of this increase in the deficit."

When we asked the Obama campaign for documentation, they pointed to calculations by the Treasury Department, based on data from the Congressional Budget Office. CBO is an independent congressional agency, but the Treasury Department is part of the Obama administration, so we need to look closely to see whether Treasury is interpreting CBO’s data fairly and accurately.

To figure out what caused the accumulation of deficits over the past decade, CBO tracked the surplus it had projected back in 2001 and compared it to the actual cumulative deficits that resulted instead. Between 2002 and 2011, the government was projected to run a cumulative surplus of $5.6 trillion. Instead, the government ran a cumulative deficit of $6.1 trillion. That’s a swing of about $11.7 trillion.

We combined the CBO data into four broad categories, which broke down like this:

* About 37 percent of the swing came from higher spending
* About 24 percent from tax cuts
* About 12 percent from increases in interest costs
* About 27 percent from CBO’s failures to predict economic conditions accurately.

Obama's Treasury Department took CBO’s detailed, bill-by-bill calculations and assigned some of those laws to Bush and some of those laws to Obama. When Treasury did this, it found that 29 percent of the cumulative shortfall came from CBO forecasting problems, 59 percent of the shortfall came from Bush administration policies and only 12 percent from Obama administration policies. That’s where Obama’s claim comes from -- roughly 10 percent due to himself, and 90 percent due to either Bush or an economy so bad that CBO was unable to predict it.

However, we see two problems with this methodology. We’ll take them in order.

"Over the last four years"

On 60 Minutes, Obama said his 90-10 split referred to "the last four years." But that claim is a stretch at best if you’re using the Treasury document. Its percentages refer to the cumulative deficit swing over a 10-year period between January 2001 and August 2011.

We can calculate a more appropriate number using the original CBO data. We’ll use three years -- 2009, 2010, and 2011 -- because those are the years that reflect Obama’s presidency. (Data for 2012 isn’t available yet.)

Over this period, 38 percent of the swing comes from spending, 20 percent from tax cuts, 14 percent from interest increases and 28 percent from faulty CBO projections. Using Obama’s strict definition of what laws count as "Bush’s" and "Obama’s," about 17 percent of this swing is attributable to Obama, not 10 percent.

What should count as "Bush’s" and "Obama’s"?

The bigger problem with Obama’s figure, though, is in what he blames on Bush.

Obama in the interview mentioned the big-ticket "Bush" programs -- the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Medicare prescription drug program. The total by his Treasury department also includes other laws, such as the 2008 Bush stimulus package, which Obama supported as a senator. Meanwhile, Obama claims as his own the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus), TARP and the tax act of 2010.

However, this division seems unduly generous toward Obama because it includes policies he supports, or has supported. Obama has said he intends to keep the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning under $200,000, which accounts for a significant chunk of the cost. If he supports the policy, he shouldn’t be able to fob off 100 percent of the responsibility on his predecessor.

The same goes for the Medicare drug program -- a program Obama not only supports but actually expanded in his health care bill. Even the responsibility for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan are more nuanced than Obama’s formulation makes it. While Obama didn’t start the wars, he did make policy decisions that wound down one war (Iraq) and extended, at least temporarily, another (Afghanistan).

We won’t venture a guess as to the actual percentage; CBO in its report acknowledges that its own numbers are "only a very rough approximation of how changes since January 2001 have contributed to the swing from projected surpluses to a string of annual deficits over the 2002-2011 period and should not be interpreted as precise tracking of all the components of that cumulative change over the past decade."

Still, even our revised starting point of 17 percent is higher than Obama’s 10 percent. And it would rise much higher if Obama were to take some responsibility for the Bush tax cuts, the Medicare drug program and the wars, as we believe he should. (The Washington Post Fact Checker gave Obama's claim four Pinocchios, its lowest rating.)

Our ruling

Obama said that "over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of" President George W. Bush’s policies and the effects of the recession.

But Obama misstated his own documentation by using four years rather than the 10 that were included in the analysis. At a minimum, that makes him responsible for at least 17 percent. But more importantly, he engages in significant cherry-picking by assigning pricey programs to Bush’s column while ignoring the fact that he supported, or supports, many of them. We rate the statement False.

Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10 percent of this increase in the deficit.