America still has damage to repair from Reagan (war on drugs and removing religion from government policy being the biggest two...)

and juice -> I think you're mixing up GDP growth and budget surpluses/deficits

This is a good chart showing debt as a % of GDP since WWII:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/...t_of_GDP_by_President.jpg

And another showing budget surplus/deficit since WWI:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...s/budget-2010/deficit.gif

What that shows me is two things:
1) No party does a good job of long term fiscal planning for the US. Everyone keeps piling it on for the future generations, hoping they won't have to do anything about it.

2) Republicans complain about big government but are actually the larger offenders of bloating the government compared to Democrats.

3) The Baby Boomers & the politicians they have elected were too into short-sighted policy decisions. That generation which "controlled" things from the mid-70s through the 2008 crisis has failed at creating a better country/economic situation for their children like their parents did for them.