Democrats controlled Congress since January 2007 and are just as responsible as Bush for the mess we are in today and now with the WH and the Congress are totally responsible for the mess we still have today.
The housing bubble, financial crisis that followed after it had burst, and severe recessions that developed were more than merely a consequence of bad public policy (tax incentives for real estate, financial deregulation/lack of robust enforcement of regulations, cheerleading housing, etc.). Needless to say, the policy decisions that contributed were bipartisan and some of them predated President Bush's tenure. At the same time, the bubble was not solely a matter of public policy. International capital flows, technological change, financial market innovation, a household borrowing binge, bad risk management in the financial sector, inherent flaws in the ratings procedures, "new age" economic thinking that overlooked the reality that markets are not always efficient and their participants are not always rational, were among other factors made the bubble possible. As a result, a credit boom coupled with a mania to make possible the enormous housing bubble.
There is no question that a stimulus was needed but not what Obama jammed through the Congress as emergency legislation.
The stimulus bill was imperfect. A sizable share of the stimulus ie., its tax provisions, enhanced Medicaid funding, etc., were political elements aimed at garnering sufficient support for the legislation. They were not designed to shore up/increase aggregate demand.
Pure stimulus focused on aggregate demand e.g., increased infrastructure investment, etc., would have delivered more bang for the buck. Nonetheless, in its April 2010
World Economic Outlook, the IMF noted that the U.S. fiscal stimulus added a full percentage point to 2009 GDP.
It should be noted that a number of the stimulus bill's opponents wanted no stimulus package whatsoever, even as such inaction would have led to a markedly worse economic contraction/job loss. That the unemployment rate rose much higher than some of the stimulus package's advocates had expected only revealed that they had underestimated the magnitude of the economic contraction. Other opponents, some of whom railed against the rescue of the financial system that, if it had collapsed would have resulted in a deflationary Depression, actually wanted a massive bailout of homeowners. While such a bailout would have softened the impact of the decline in housing prices, it would have done nothing to avert a Depression once the financial system collapsed.
Where policy makers should cooperate going forward is developing a credible fiscal consolidation program and implementing it beginning next year should the economy continue to grow. But, at least at this point, it appears that ideology will likely trump the politically courageous decisions required to launch such a program. Instead soothing fairy tales that the economy will magically grow its way out of the nation's imbalances, sparing policy makers of the less popular need to impose a combination of discretionary spending cuts, mandatory spending reform, and tax increases. That's exactly the kind of denial that has gotten other countries into ever deeper fiscal difficulty.