Whenever an intelligent discussion gets going on the housing crisis, all the roots point back to the Clinton years. The last balanced budget was because a republican congress forced it on Clinton. The largest, and fastest growing, problem in the budget pre-september was social welfare spending which has its roots with the democrats... yet a 150B a year war is labeled the main problem. Then when a $3T bailout/stimulus is proposed, these same democrats don't bat an eye. If Bush's only major policy on economics had been reversed, tax cuts, it would have had no impact on a housing crisis started before him. Deficit spending is just as pronounced within societies where lefties rule such as Europe. Yet with all that, there remain idiots who want to blame Bush for everything. I guess because it's easy and requires little thinking, and that way they can deflect attention from the larger and more insidious way the government is screwing us. It's all for the 'common good' so just grab your ankles and be happy. How can a choice that leaves us with so much debt we cannot possibly hope to pay it be good for us? So MAYBE we stave off a depression for now, MAYBE spending even more on medicare will give us long term investments that payoff (BULLSHIT!), but to take that bet requires handing our kids so much debt that they could never hope to achieve our standard of living. wow, government sure got smarter didn't it.
You have GWB, the frat party boy, to thank for leaving behind a house of cards and a mess requiring an expensive cleanup. Or was his administration in the too distant past for you to consider?
It was never balanced, just made look good with creative accounting. Not even that creative, they just put the humongous liabilities in the foot notes. Has little to do with the housing crisis anyway.