I agree with this. However, if you are a Republican and you weren't banging you hand on the table and screaming at the top of your lungs that the Bush White House was running needless deficits, then you don't have much credibility.
Competent fiscal policy is to run surpluses in good times and deficits in bad. You run surpluses so you have some firepower to deal with the bad times. Yet the Bush ran not only deficits in good times - remember, according to the Veep, "deficits don't matter" - but Bush cut taxes while embarking on what is so far the third most expensive war in the history of the nation. Bush should have been running surpluses and paying for the Iraq war as we went.
With the exception of maybe Ron Paul, pretty much the entire Republican party cheered the White House on while Bush wracked up debt during a time of economic expansion. This is why the Republican party has no credibility on this issue.
Precisely. And continuing Bush's failed policies of running enormous deficits is downright criminal, when the consequences are known. It should be clear that both parties fail the people, and fail to abide by the Constitution by any stretch of the imagination. I don't even see any philosophical (or actual) differences between this last Republican administration and this one.