Fiscal conservatives like myself, despite being continually painted as Bush-supporting deficit-building hypocrites, actually didn’t like a lot of President George W. Bush’s (R) policies. In my case, while I supported much of Bush’s foreign policy, I clashed with his administration often on domestic and economic policy. Some elements were right-on—a hands-off approach to business regulation, for example—while others were either extraordinarily ineffective or terribly misguided. The federal deficit under Bush was too high through most of his presidency, and the bailout bonanza he embarked upon last October was absolutely appalling.

Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign for the presidency was, in part, derailed by his fervent support for the same socialist government bailouts championed by Bush and now-President Barack Obama (D). Worse, Obama adeptly countered McCain’s claims of being a fiscal conservative with a simple reply: under Bush and a Republican Congress, we have had record-breaking federal deficits. Why should we trust the same party to rein-in federal spending?

To this, Republican candidates like McCain had no viable response. But the shameful big-government deficit spending of the last eight years, reprehensible as it may be, pales in comparison to the first year of the Obama administration’s spending policies.

For perspective, in 2004 the Bush administration set a record for largest annual federal deficit: 413 billion dollars. His administration broke this record in 2008 with a deficit of 455 billion dollars. For 2009, however, we are seeing incomprehensible numbers. With the fiscal year only 3/4 complete, the federal deficit has already passed a whopping 1 trillion dollars. It is projected to pass $1.8 trillion before the end of the fiscal year, with some estimates projecting the deficit to break 2 trillion dollars.

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