Then and now

Barack Obama, just a few short months ago:

When President Bush came into office, we had a budget surplus and the national debt was a little over $5 trillion. It has doubled over the last eight years.

And we are now looking at a deficit of well over half a trillion dollars. So one of the things that I think we have to recognize is pursuing the same kinds of policies that we pursued over the last eight years is not going to bring down the deficit...We've got to take this in a new direction, that's what I propose as president.

Well, it sounded nice at the time.