Economic planning - liberal vs conservative

In 1981, with bond prices at their highest rate ever, the US government had a historic opportunity. We could have bought bonds from economically stable governments across the world, and US taxpayers would have reaped the benefits for 30 years. Unfortunately for the citizens of the United States, the conservative movement that was in power declared that debt is good, and borrowed unprecedented amounts of money at historically high interest rates. The plan of increasing government spending and borrowing went on for 12 years until Democrats took back the White House, and the work began to repair America's long-term economy. It took 8 years of responsible spending and budgeting, but we went from the largest budget deficit in history to having a $200B surplus, and were on track to completely eliminate the national debt.

In 2001, all the long-term economic planning was laid to ruin as Bush II returned the US to a policy of increased spending and increased borrowing. However this time it was much worse - huge expenditures (2 wars, 2 tax cuts for big business and the wealthy) were left off the budget so future administrations would have to deal with them. Once again, we heard the conservative mantra that "debt doesn't matter", and 8 years later, we were saddled with a massive amount of structural debt that projected into the future, and crippled the US economy.

In 2009, hope returned for financial responsibility, and long-term fiscal planning that is beneficial to the US.

"[President Obama] outlines a plan to reduce the nation's debt by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, and to get annual deficits as a percent of the economy down from 10.6% today, to 3% by 2015."

money.cnn.com/2010/02/01/news/economy/obama_budget_deficits/index.htm?hpt=T1

In his first year, President Obama is taking a lot of heat for not being able to instantly solve an extremely serious problem that is literally 30 years in the making.
While a quick fix isn't possible, these facts represent real progress towards fixing a fundamental problem with the long-term US economy that began in 1981 and greatly accelerated in 2001.