That's a gross mischaracterisation of the situation. The banking collapse was significantly due to a combination of over-weak market regulation causing a real

That's a gross mischaracterisation of the situation. The banking collapse was significantly due to a combination of over-weak market regulation causing a real estate market bubble and outright fraud at credit ratings agencies - I can think of no other term for securitising sub-prime loans into super-prime derivatives. So, there's a major financial market crash / correction (significantly exacerbated by a very well known liquidity shortage due to institutions having to rebuild reserves and up risk factors), leading to a generalised collapse in revenues, government included. If government is to 'live within its means' at such a time as some suggest then the spending cuts need to be utterly, utterly vicious, no way round it - cuts have to not just cover the reduction in revenues but also the increase in welfare payments, or would you rather have the suddenly poor and unemployed either starving or rioting? For the largest single player in the economy to make cuts on that scale at a time when the economy is already severely stressed, you bet the result would snowball and put the economy into an even more severe tailspin. Which is why President Bush authorised the stimulus packages you're complaining about, which cost more on his short watch than Obama's rather longer period and yet which has still cost less than two other measures for which we should remember President Bush - top-end tax cuts and a war in Iraq over weapons that didn't exist and was pushed for after a terrorist attack by an opponent of the Iraqi regime. All of which is on top of the limit being raised several times by Presidents Bush 1 and 2 and President Reagan, all of whom incurred significant debts. President Clinton, on the other hand, left a rising surplus which Bush took no time at all in reversing. This whole debacle is idiotic and intellectually bankrupt pre-election grandstanding by the Republican leadership, who deserve severe electoral punishment for this absurdity.