In addition to Kevin's comments - the deficit (per year) has gone down for the last two years, largely as a result of the last "the world is gonna end" fiscal crisis when sequestration was introduced.

Sequestration certainly was one of the factors. They're also taking in more revenue. There is an attempt to position this as a "growing economy" but the actual labor participation rates don't bear that out. The CBO's current forecast is that the deficit drop is short term, so I guess we'll see. What I've been reading more about in the last few weeks is the huge potential for massive ACHA fraud, especially given that the employer mandate was delayed and the individual mandate wasn't. Much as I hate both mandates, from a purely operational side it's better to either do both at the same time (or not have them at all).

I agree that Bush was a very flawed president. The threat of the "mighty hand of government" (Bush's words) to force certain mortgages was foolish. His media campaign to spend huge amounts of money to get Americans to "believe in" the Iraq war were even worse. I'm a libertarian (with a little 'l', not a big 'L') and I look back and say we've had two very bad presidents.