Will the last Republican please turn out the lights - oh, and run for Senate?

Time to stop fighting the political wars of the 1970s, Stevil. Times have changed since Reaganomics.

Some lawmakers, pundits, and others continue to say that President George W. Bush’s policies did not drive the projected federal deficits of the coming decade — that, instead, it was the policies of President Obama and Congress in 2009 and 2010. But, the fact remains: the economic downturn, President Bush’s tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years (see Figure 1).

The deficit for fiscal year 2009 — which began more than three months before President Obama’s inauguration — was $1.4 trillion and, at 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the largest deficit relative to the economy since the end of World War II. At $1.3 trillion and nearly 9 percent of GDP, the deficit in 2010 was only slightly lower. If current policies remain in place, deficits will likely resemble those figures in 2011 and hover near $1 trillion a year for the next decade.

The events and policies that pushed deficits to these high levels in the near term were, for the most part, not of President Obama’s making. If not for the Bush tax cuts, the deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression (including the cost of policymakers’ actions to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term. By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019. The stimulus law and financial rescues will account for less than 10 percent of the debt at that time.

From Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits

Regardless of whether you want to call them wars, they vastly increased the deficit for dubious reasons. And they were started in 2002-2003.

The tax cuts that Bush signed were "across the board" in a superficial sense but were definitely more beneficial to the upper end. And they were paid for out of BORROWING -- directly increasing the deficit.

There is no question that the Republican governance of 2001-2006 vastly increased the deficit. And as a result I simply do not believe any Republican when they talk about cutting spending or getting the budget under control. They had the chance, they blew it big. They're full of shit. They're the party of Dick "deficits don't matter" Cheney.

If you want to break down Fed vs State and local government employment, here's a good summary from PolitiFact (Rated as TRUE: Government jobs have fallen by half million since January 2009). Federal employment is only 13% of total government employment. So if you exclude non-Federal and you exclude postal workers then you can get an increase of 6.7% of that 13%. Wow, scary!

Let's take a look at the chart you posted:

2008 2,692 1,450 64 4,206
2011 2,756 1,583 64 4,403

So from 2008-2011 civilian Executive branch employment increased by 64,000. Uniformed military employment increased by 133,000. So your chart says that two-thirds of the increase in this Federal workforce employment comes from the military which had been fighting two wars! Golly.

Hey, while we're on the chart, let's take a look at 1988.

1988 3,054 2,176 59 5,289

So in 1988, the end of the Reagan era, there were 298,000 more Federal civilian workers and 593,000 more uniformed military personnel than there are now.

ZOMG, that must mean that... REAGAN WAS A BIG GOVERNMENT, SOCIALIST, COMMUNIST, ANTI-COLONIAL KENYAN!!!

Or maybe you're just full of shit on this. You know I support you when you have a good point. But on this, you're incredibly wrong.

There's reasons to criticize Obama and Democrats. Plenty. But this ain't it. And harping on it makes so-called "centrists" look like a bunch of partisan shills, because these are Republican propaganda talking points that you're repeating.