Obama's Administration Amasses Huge Deficit Early On

President Obama recently criticized Republicans as the “folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt,” but the cost of Tuesday’s bank bailout alone equals about 75 percent of the total $3.35 trillion in deficits amassed by the Bush administration between 2002 and 2009.

The projected 2010 – 2017 budget deficit of the Obama administration including the stimulus bill is $8.4 trillion—2.5 times the size of President Bush’s deficit over an equivalent period.

The $2.25 trillion bailout announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday dwarfs the $787 billion stimulus bill. A central part of the bailout plan involves spending up to $1 trillion to purchase toxic assets, and last week some estimated that the total cost could top $3 – 4 trillion.

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Al.), the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said on Wednesday that Geithner “wasted” the Senate’s time by omitting details from the bailout plan. The plan’s lack of specifics caused financial markets to tank, sending the Dow Jones industrial average plunging by 382 points Tuesday.

Obama has scheduled a “fiscal-responsibility summit” for Feb. 23 and will unveil a budget blueprint three days later, designed to pressure politicians to address the country’s rising debt.

On Friday the president defended the cost of the stimulus plan, but he recognized the need to think in the long term. “We’re going to have to have fiscal discipline,” he said. “We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying.”