Inherited Deficit eh?

I'm really enjoying some of these emails I get. Sometimes they're a hoax, and sometimes they are incorrect, and sometimes they are right on the money.
Like this one I think.
It appears to be lifted almost directly from Hot Air.

Here it is straight from the email:

Sick of hearing "Inherited"??

The Washington Post babbled again recently about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush, blah blah blah.
Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this nonsense. So once more, I'll try a short civics lesson.

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that has controlled Congress since January 2007 is the DEMOCRATIC Party.

They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:



If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.

WAKE UP, AMERICA , BEFORE ITS TOO LATE

Now the very first reply to the Hot Air piece disputes much of this. I leave it to you to kick over there and read it. I respond to that reply here.

I must admit, Bush and the rest of the party did stray far from proper Republican thought by not decreasing spending, and in fact increasing it. This is one of the main reasons I have so little faith in the party now.

But so few people seem to remember or even admit that, like The One, Bush inherited an economy that was on the decline. When did the Internet bubble burst? When did Bush start his presidency? Nuff said about that.

The writer points out that Bush benefited by a housing bubble, which I believe is true. In true Dem fashion however, he touts the Clinton surplus which was, in my opinion, almost entirely a result of the Internet bubble. Both presidents take credit for things that were not their doing.

This in no way changes the fact that The One helped bring about the very deficit we have now. It also in no way changes the graph. The Repubs on their worst day were less spendhappy than the Dems on their best.

When The One says he inherited a deficit from Bush, he is merely being a standard issue Democrat, as "blame Bush" is their mantra.