The W. Economy

Answer to a question in Quora, by Chris Joose:

The Bush administration came into office with a budget that paid down not just interest on the debt, but principal as well- and Clinton was pushing to pay the debt down more aggressively still, to the tune of paying it off entirely by 2015 (tho he never did get that through congress).  Granted, he came in with a somewhat soft economy, as the market had corrected after the .com bubble, so it's not unreasonable to hedge by saying that everything wasn't all daisies and rainbows on the economic front.  That said, the Bush administration had every ability and opportunity (politically and economically) to manage costs and keep the budget under control- but it simply did not.

Bush entered office with a budget surplus, and a majority of the house controlled by his party.  After his first mid-term election, his party controlled both houses of congress, meaning his party controlled both the executive and the legislature for 4 years.  During this period, the following happened:

• Tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy.
• Wars. Not paid for, not even put on the budget. One aspect of these wars, new in our era, is that they were largely conducted by mercenaries and contractors, who happened to have generous contract terms and close personal relationships with members of the Administration.
• Medicare, part D- which forbade the government from negotiating drug prices- in effect, a great big taxpayer-funded giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry.
• 'benign' non-enforcement of any sort of financial crime you can describe, which led to the biggest financial meltdown in living memory
• A series of recessions, each characterized by 'jobless recoveries', loose monetary policy, continued tax cuts, and the creation of a new security agency with enormous cash flow and zero accountability for it
• General mismanagement and enormous growth of the government, but without even a sop to controlling costs, unless you count this: the administration cut the budget for government auditors, whose function is to control waste, fraud, and abuse.  Typically, a dollar spent on an auditor returns 20 in prevented waste, and it's clear from history that it was not an accident.

Politically, the Bush administration had everything it needed to continue paying down the debt.  When Clinton left office, we were paying down principal on the debt.  But it seems to have deliberately made choices to siphon as much money into the pockets of the well-connected as possible, with disastrous fiscal results