Revenues for 2004 were $1.95 trillion. Deficit was $412 billion.

Revenues for 1998 were $2 trillion. Surplus of $62 billion.

So what changed?

Democrat or Republican: “It’s the spending, stupid.”

The CPBB graph needs some work. I’m assuming neither the economic downturn nor the war are still going to be a factor in 2019. I do like the way liberals consider that big orange bar – money earned and kept by the private sector for their own production and use – to be some kind of theft from the State.

Note that Obama’s current budget proposes further extending the “middle class” tax cuts (under $250,000). That’s five out of every six dollars in that big orange bar.

The Democrats, with the presidency and both the House and Senate, got their bluff called on the tax cuts at the end of 2010. They’re the Obama tax cuts now. They will come up for renewal at the end of 2012, with Obama as president no matter who wins the election. If he does not kill them then, will the Democrats finally sit down and shut up about this? Or will he blame the House, and hope his constituents are too stupid to remember the end of 2010?

More in this new CBO analysis, unfiltered through liberal think tank.

I started collecting numbers this morning, then had to run a couple of errands with my wife.

While I was out, I realized that this was the wrong question.

The real question is “why is a $3.6 trillion budget the only unassailable premise?” A trillion more than in 2006? Why is the only issue being discussed how we can squeeze more out of the producers of this country to keep increasing the size of government?

Obama’s budget plans call for a $5.5 trillion budget in ten years.

Who’s going to “pay” for that?

One long, lingering and devastating legacy has been home foreclosures. They have a devastating impact on the economy. And the bank bailouts involved massive borrowing.

All Bush-Cheney.

But we’re supposed to forget all that, and say that Obama inherited a healthy economy, a healthy country, and has run it into the ground.

Anyone who believes that also believes that Bush didn’t lie, the US didn’t torture, there were no “black” sites, Saddam harbored al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia wasn’t behind 9-11 and all manner of fairy tales. They will never be open to reality. Can’t be.

Latest numbers here.

But it’s still the spending increases, not the tax cuts.

The tax revenues in 2007 (2005 dollars) would have been enough to put every Federal budget prior to 2005 in surplus. The revenues in the crummy economic year of 2011 would have done the same for every budget prior to 2000.

If we were spending no more than we were at the end of Clinton’s presidency, we would be in a surplus right now.

But the spending increases never stop.

Here’s a washington Post estimate of what the Bush tax cuts “cost” the government over ten years.

Bottom line in the article: $1.3 trillion.

Again, the deficit for 2012 alone was about $1.2 trillion.

Now what?

All these memes depend on people desperately avoiding looking at any actual numbers.

The Democrats are doing the wrong things to fix the economy. We need people who will do the right ones.

I’m not saying what Obama has done is a good thing, just that Bush will always be responsible for his role.

And there is no economic spending bubble, but you can choose which actions were criminal. Maybe not against the law but criminal none the less.

I notice they were extended at the end of 2010, when the Democrats had total control in Washington.

Obama could have eliminated those cuts. He could have eliminated only the cuts on the “rich.”

He did neither.

Why?

“Potential revenues?” We already have “saved jobs.” How many more theoretical statistics do we need?

The real numbers stand on their own.

How many years of near-trillion dollar deficits will it take to fix the “Bush era collapse?” So far Obama’s budget has at least ten. The CBO estimates stop there. And those predictions assume ALL the Bush tax cuts will expire in 2013, including $230 billion a year in middle class tax cuts, and $40 billion a year for the “rich” Think that’s going to happen?

How is a bubble created by trillion dollar deficits and infinite borrowing and printing any better than one created by the financial sector and the feds?