First, I need to start out by stating that I dislike the actions of and the Presidency of George W. Bush with a passion. Eventually history will show him to be one of the worst and least qualified individuals to ever reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Now, that being said George W. Bush did not do this without help. If various Congresspersons and Senators had not slowly undermined all of the laws enacted during and after the 1929 Depression to protect the American citizen, George W. Bush would not have been able to do the damage he did. Attempts to remove the protections given the American people started in the 1950's under Dwight D. Eisenhower, but, these early attempts were for the most part not successful. It was not until after the election of Richard Milhouse Nixon that the entities wanting removal of the safeties began to have much of any success. Instead of doing anything that would be really noticeable, the removal and undermining was a very slow and methodical effort done under the guise of promotion of economic growth. I would in fact be quite certain that those promoting this actually thought that they were trying to do something good and none had the concept that what they were doing was in fact to set the stage for the second largest (as of right now) world wide economic depression in world history. Because it was quiet and done in very slow subtle ways, it is actually factually possible that subsequent Presidents after Nixon were probably not aware that this was happening either.
Where Bush gets the blame 100% is in fact to me far more narrow. He gets the blame in that in his rush to help out the "Billionaire Boys Club" he totally ignored the obvious in that he approved bail outs and rewards without extreme oversight and control as well as sufficient investigation to clarify what had happened to make these bailouts necessary in each case.
Yes, in reality we can reduce this deficit by an incredible amount by removing troops from the middle east, by removing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and by re-examination of taxation on multi-billion dollar corporations who have increased profits exponentially during the second worst economic times in history at the expense of the American People.
Actually we can change things for the better very quickly if we want to.
1.) Remova all Banking Services and Operation involving American people from Foreign shores. Bring back those jobs to this country and do it by force and do it now. This is one of the largest security issues we face and it is never talked about.
2.) Security and Exchange Laws need to be amended to eliminate speculation on commodities which could endanger the Security of the Nation. These would include all energy forms period.
3.) I believe in import tariffs. This is the one place that the United States has been extremely foolish. Most of the countries that are kicking our rear ends are doing so because those same countries tax goods imported from the United States.
Let's say that for example China places an 18% tariff on American Imported Goods. The United States in turn then places an 18% tariff on Chinese goods Imported into the United States. We just mirror the tariffs of the country in question. That will encourage Americans to purchase American Made goods rather than cheap knock offs made overseas.
4.) The Tsunami in Japan should have told us something when the largest three American Automobile producers in this country were in danger of shutting down production because so many parts for their cars were being made overseas that they only had about six weeks worth of parts here.
What do you think of your Chrysler, Ford or GM car having so many of it's components being sourced from foreign shores?
This was tried in the U.K. and as a result the U.K. lost a great deal of it's finest automobiles when outsourcing led to the sale of Rolls Royce to BMW, Bentley to Volkswagen, Jaguar to Ford who sold it to Tata of India, Range Rover to Ford and so on and so forth. This hurt the U.K. a great deal.
Failure is neither the property exclusively of George W. Bush (as much as I would like to blame him) nor is it the property of Barak Obama either. You need to look no farther than the United States Congress and Senate.
Remember: The United States Government is based in three branches
Executive: Which is the President who can only enforce laws on the books and work as an administrator of what is there. His job is not the creation of legislation.
Legistlative: Which is the United States Congress and The United States Senate are the ones that make the laws for others to enforce.
Judicial: is the highest court in the land who must review all of the judgments of lower courts to see that the United States Constitution is being upheld. They are sworn to uphold it and not to re-write it for a political party.