A couple points. First, as a liberal, I criticized President Bush not for giving tax cuts, but for giving tax cuts before we had paid off the debt. Tax cuts should, ideally, be a reward for fixing the deficit and debt. Note that I think Obama's tax cuts where also a mistake for the same reason, and because the extra tax savings is not going to have a significant imp[act on the economy. I save enough from Obama's tax cuts to afford an extra pack of cigarettes a week, which is not going to really stimulate the economy, especially since I am giving almost all of the tax cut back to the government when I buy that pack.
In other words, the Obama tax cuts are political pandering and nothing more. You are beginning to go into the light; this is a good thing.
Secondly, you failed to mention a key point, which is that Obama is dealing with a financial crisis, which Bush did not really have to do. When this crisis started, Bush was already on his way out, though I do note that Bush also threw money at the problem. This is why I say that comparing the deficit under the two is not fair, yet.
I am aware of the fabricated "financial crises" and the ramifications it can have on the political landscape.
The issue here is that the fear mongering used by Democrats, their willing media and Obama was not intended to actually confront the effects and causes of the "crises", but rather seen as an opportunity to spend the American people into a $1.8 trillion deficit in an effort to promote a Liberal agenda that could not have been done through honest debate.
Why do I make this claim contrary to some "respected" economists and business leaders? Because I wasn't born yesterday and can recall far worse situations during the Carter years.
The other reason is that I know that such illogical Keynesian efforts to use the backs of the American taxpayer to promote a LIBERAL agenda and spend us into TRILLION dollar deficits will do NOTHING to make the economy better, but rather exacerbate the problems of unemployment, investment, capital formation and consumer spending because once we get the BILL for this largess and misguided partisan policies, the economy will sink even further into the abyss.
What you get when you allow Government to decide who the economic winners should be and promoting them by re-distributing wealth to achieve it and spend us into deficits is capital flight (which is the engine of any economy), inflationary pressures due to the vast increase of the money supply and sinking the country further into DEBT with the interest burdens imposed by such out of control borrowing.
These are of course OPINIONS based on my education and 55 years living experience, but I am perfectly happy to put MY best guess against Obama's any day of the week.
Ask yourself this; where in any of these debates are these professed 5,000,000 (of course forgetting that the economy is still shedding jobs to the tune of more than 6,000,000 jobs) new jobs going to come from? The Government? Because so far, that is the ONLY entity that is expanding; unfortunately Government produces NOTHING and competes with the free market for scarce funds.