Obama's Budget and Deficit Spending

This article by a Cato Institute analyst is quite revealing.  The author asserts that the budget deficit scheme was essentially put in place by Bush in the waning days of his administration and that Obama is mosty simply carrying on with Bush policies that caused the huge increase in debt levels.  The Cato Institute is libertarian and therefore much more conservative than liberal in its politics and policies, so there is no obvious blame-everything-on- Obama thing going on here.  What he does say is that Obama promised change, "go through the budget line by line", get the fiscal house in order, etc, but in reality is simply building on the profligate Bush budget of 2009 which he inherited.  Basically this article underscores why so many conservatives were disappointed in the Bush administration which never really seriously attacked government overspending and runaway entitlement programs.  One may chalk this lack of resolve by Bush to 9/11 and the need to pander to the liberal big spenders in Congress in order to gain support for the WOT efforts.  On the other hand Bush was never a real Reagan conservative, any more than his father was, and while he believed in free markets, et al, let's remember he never vetoed any of those outrageous spending bills served up to him year after year.  Obama is a weak, ridiculous excuse for a CIC, however a lot of his problems were served up during the Bush years.  Bush is a good man and acted like a CIC should in the aftermath of 9/11, but his commitment to true conservative principles was always suspect.