The first thing I always hear when people question the bailouts and debt is that GW "spent tons of money on the war!" John Taylor, professor of economics at Stanford, stated in the Financial Times that the national debt was ~41% of GDP in both 1988 and 2008. Under the previous administration, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that without policy changes the debt would be ~82% by 2018. But under this administration, that number could be ~100% by 2014. Clearly, all of this debt is not a good thing at all. Yikes!