In the summer of 2011, just as Congressional Republicans were ramping up their debt ceiling rhetoric, Randi tackled the question of how America got into the debt and deficit situation our nation is in.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post agreed with Randi; we weren't running into problems with the debt-ceiling because of new policies passed under President Obama. We needed to raise the debt ceiling, "because of the accumulated effect of policies passed in recent decades, many of them under Republicans."

As Randi has said MANY times - and as Jackie Calmes of the New York Times confirmed - when President Obama came to the White House, he "banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller." That included banning the budgetary slight-of-hand those at the Pentagon used to hide the real costs of the war.

The chart below, from the New York Times, makes it as clear as day who is really responsible for the fiscal anchor Americans still have weighing on their country's budget now:

h/t New York Times