The national debt? Republicans built that

As President Obama and Congressional leaders negotiate in Washington, the American people need to keep a couple of things in mind about the looming "fiscal cliff." For starters, the issue is not that the national debt will go up (which roughly half of those in one poll believe to be the case), but that it will be cut much too quickly.  If you need any more proof that economic growth and job creation should be Job Number One for U.S. policymakers, look no further than the UK, where the 2010 austerity program of draconian spending cuts and tax hikes pushed the country into a double-dip recession.

But for all the misplaced focus on the U.S. national debt, a second point can't be emphasized enough: the Republicans built that.

It's not just that Ronald Reagan presided over a tripling of the national debt (and raised the debt limit 17 times) during his eight years in the White House  or that President George W. Bush nearly doubled it again. The end-of-decade $5.6 trillion surplus forecast by the Congressional Budget Office in 2000 was more than eviscerated by two unfunded wars, two rounds of Bush tax cuts, the unpaid for Medicare prescription drug benefit and the TARP bank bailout. To accommodate those "spend and not tax" policies, Bush and his GOP allies in Congress voted seven times to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. And as it turns out, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) voted for all of it.

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