Table 1 below shows Federal Tax Revenues, Federal Expenditures and the Budget Surplus or Deficit from 1993 (the first year of the Clinton Presidency) to 2011.

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They were ideas like privatizing Social Security, like moving back from a balanced budget and a surplus to deficit and debt.

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The president argued that taxes could be cut because the economy and budget surplus were booming, and then that tax cuts were needed to save America from recession and a deficit.

ECONOMIST: Introduction

Whereas Bush couldn't name a single mistake -- not, say, letting Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, or refusing to allow weapons inspectors to ascertain that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, or backing economic policies that took the greatest budget surplus in American history and turned it into the biggest deficit in history -- Obama has stepped up.

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One reason why this system cannot go on much longer is that Asia's crisis of 1997-98 put the budget deeply into deficit and, unaided, it may not return to surplus.

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In early October the Treasury released a pre-election economic and fiscal update indicating that after 14 years in surplus the budget balance was set to slip into deficit.

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Between 1992 and 2000, for example, the Clinton administration turned a worrying budget deficit into a handsome surplus.

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But by cuddling up to industry lobbies and failing to keep any control on spending (and not just of the defence sort), the president has turned a huge budget surplus into a large deficit.

ECONOMIST: American politics