Let's keep in mind that it was Bush who took the Clinton surplus, and turned it into massive deficits.
It's also not all "bloated disgusting spending." Huge swaths of the Obama deficits were a result of Bush tax cuts. We should note that a lot of that "bloated disgusting spending" were also Bush policies, most importantly waging two wars. Government receipts also tanked because of the recession.
Government jobs generally do not harm the economy. What they do is put people to work. Some of that income is recaptured as taxes (income, payroll, sales). Most of it gets spent, which goes right back into the economy. Some programs like unemployment will have a higher multiplier rate (since it almost all gets spent), but government employees are not a drag.
We should note that this has helped, time and again, to combat recessions. Ideally you want to hire people to perform useful short-term tasks, such as fixing infrastructure. That in particular would have been perfect for the 2007 recession, since so much of the unemployment was in the construction sector, interest rates were ridiculously low, and those programs necessarily phase out after completion in a few years.
What did we get instead? A bunch of tax breaks, and a stimulus that erred on the small side. I.e. Public sector jobs declined during Obama's term.