Dude, where's my $10 trillion?

With the year-end expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the looming "sequestration" of $1.2 trillion they agreed to during their debt ceiling hostage-taking last summer, the message from Republican leaders is the same as it ever was. Taxes (especially for the rich) must not go up, defense spending must not go down, and the increasing national debt is all Barack Obama's fault.

The coming "fiscal cliff" brought Dick Cheney, the same man who as vice president boasted that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," back to Washington this week to get Congressional Republicans "ginned up" to prevent the $600 billion Pentagon sequester. Meanwhile, the GOP leadership team of Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent a letter to President Obama to demand a replacement for the defense cuts, one which of course must not include "tax increase proposals that face bipartisan congressional opposition." And on the campaign trail, would-be Romney running mate and former Bush Office of Management and Budget Chief Rob Portman (R-OH) warned that "we're going broke."

Of course, the United States is not going broke. But thanks to the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, by 2020 the U.S. Treasury will be roughly $10 trillion poorer than it would otherwise have been. And these guys supported all of it.

As you'll recall, George W. Bush entered the White House having inherited a balanced budget and CBO forecast of a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years. Noting that "'the federal budget will have the second largest surplus in history," President Bush moved forward with the massive tax cuts of 2001. But even as the World Trade Center site was still smoldering, Bush, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, told the American people not to sacrifice but to go shopping and "get down to Disney World." And in 2003, George W. Bush became the first modern president to cut taxes during wartime. (It should be noted that Barack Obama became the second.)

And so, the fiscal hemorrhaging began. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Medicare prescription drug program and, most of all, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 rapidly drained Uncle Sam's coffers. Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor voted for all of it. And along with large majorities of the Republicans in the House and Senate, they voted seven times during Bush's tenure to raise the debt ceiling as well.

For his part, President Bush promised that "you cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." As it turned out, not so much. In words and pictures, the New York Times told the tale a year ago:

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