Old news for a new crowd

With all this fuss over the summer to present about the rampantly growing debt problem, I continue to wonder how the Right can say this when national debt quintupled under Reagan and Bush. I won't lie: Reagan certainly did wonders with the economy during his reign in office, but as Lloyd Bensen (D-Tex) said in the New York Times, October 6, 1988 "if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too." Though the debt bubble has gone from $10.7 trillion in 2008 to $14.2 trillion by February 2011 under Obama, has anyone been asking the question how we got to that original number in the first place. Here is a little chart to look at it. I´m far from offering a solution, but this should get us thinking a little bit.