Over at the Heritage Foundation’s website, Brian Riedl takes apart a tiresome argument that because the Republicans were fiscally irresponsible it is okay for the Democrats to be fiscally irresponsible too:

The logic seems to be that if a Republican President can run up $3.35 trillion in debt, then Obama should be given free rein to run up even greater debt. This is absurd. First, Obama pledged to fix what he considers Republican governing errors – not double down on them. Second, the permanent $1 trillion budget deficits America is currently facing call for a tougher approach than the $150 billion to $450 billion deficits that typified the last eight years. Finally, many Republicans blame themselves for supporting too much deficit spending under Bush, and now believe that spending should be restrained to fix those deficits. Should they be criticized for coming around to this position? Would the President prefer that Republicans continue to argue that deficits never matter?

President Obama is set to more than double President Bush’s deficits.