…is the root of the problem.

Per capita federal expenditures have almost doubled since Carter, and go up almost regardless of which party is in the White House. Ironically, it was steady only under Bill Clinton, but that’s only because he gave himself a Republican Congress in the second year of his first term. George W. Bush had an opportunity top get it under control, but he was a disaster on that front (the biggest reason he lost the Congress in 2006, which led to even more disastrous spending).

It’s the spending, stupid. And not the war spending.

As Glenn’s emailer notes, it started to skyrocket right after the Democrats took over Congress in 2007. Before that we were on track to a balanced budget. The fiscal crisis would have certainly caused a spike in the deficit with reduced revenues, but absent the insane economic policies of the first two years of the Obama administration, the economy would have bounced back just as sharply as it dropped, as it does in most other recessions.