Should the main cause of the deficit be forgotten? I mean, fighting two wars at the same time costs money (heh, even one war costs money), and neither of these wars were financed by taxes.

re: #1 andres

Are they not included in the first shot glass?

re: #2 Bobibutu

Are they not included in the first shot glass?

It doesn’t seem to. IIRC, George W. Bush inherited a surplus from Clinton. At the end of Bush presidency, the deficit was over a trillion dollars.

Something doesn’t adds up. Quite probably they used different statistics for the initial and final deficit numbers.

During the Bush administration funding for Afghanistan and Iraq was not included in the budget, is was passed as a separate spending bill. That effectively kept the direct cost of the wars out of the federal deficit. That changed in 2010, when Obama included the cost of the wars in the Budget. As of 2008, the US had spent 900 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan, so that would be (on average) an extra shot glass per year. In reality the cost or miltary operation in Iraq hit 100 billion per year in 2005, and has been higher. So There probably should be at least two shot extra shot glasses for 07, and another two extra ones for 08.

At the end of the day talking about the deficit is stupid…it’s better to talk about the net change in the US public debt from year to year.