In the the 8 years since 2003, our debt has risen nearly $8 trillion. Lack of tax revenue? No. Tax revenues have risen 20% since 2003. Yet, over that time, spending has risen a reckless 60%.First, you could, as he does, describe this as too much spending. You could just as well describe this as evidence of Congress 's unwillingness to raise enough revenue to pay for its spending priorities.
Second, he makes it sound as if there has been a steady, relentless rise in spending since 2003. However, the great majority of this increased spending is a direct result of the financial crisis, over which Republicans seem to suffer amnesia. The GOP want to leave the impression that Obama's policies have somehow led to massive amounts of new spending. The stimulus provided less than $500 billion in new spending spread out over three years ($300 billion was in tax cuts). From 2007 to 2009 the deficit exploded from $160 billion to $1.4 trillion. If you remove the stimulus, in 2009 the deficit still would have been over $1.2 trillion.
Third, why select 2003 as the baseline? He does this to divert attention from the budgetary consequences of the two Bush tax cuts, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and the Iraq War all of which the GOP supported and which cumulatively had a much, much larger impact on the deficit the the 2009 stimulus. If you instead take 2000 as your baseline, the last year before GOP policies began affecting the budget, you get a very different picture.
Fourth, and most importantly, DeMint uses the same dodge that Scarborough did. He looks at raw numbers instead of looking at the numbers relative to the size of the economy. In 2003 taxes as a percentage of GDP were just over 16%. In 2010, they were under 15%. Perhaps we do have revenue problem after all? It gets even worse if you take 2000 as your baseline. In that year taxes were over 20% of GDP. In fact, since 2000 taxes have dropped as a percentage of GDP by about 6% and spending has increased by about 7%.
This is precisely why you need a balanced approach to address this problem. The genesis of the problem is equally balanced.
I would say the genesis of the problem is shared, but not equally. There are policies and programs that can clearly be tied to a particular party or agent - Medicare Part D - Bush, for example, or the relentless march of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democrats and notably Barney Frank. Obama has certainly done his bit, and the expansion of Federal spending under his watch is magnificent. The balanced approach that I would like to see is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That should at least slow future fiscal adventurism.
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