A record deficit

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

When his term ends in January, President Bush will leave the White House, and its next occupant, with a legacy of red ink.

The White House reported Monday that the expected deficit for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 will be $482 billion, the largest deficit in the history of the United States. However, that number does not include the full costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or the new housing bill passed this weekend. When those are added in, the budget deficit is expected to be more than $500 billion.

Bush inherited a budget surplus from President Clinton of $128.2 billion, but Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress quickly spent the nation into a huge deficit.

Republicans have tried to dodge responsibility and pin it on someone else, blaming it on the slowing economy or the cost of the war. But they clearly hold the responsibility, having had control of Congress for the first six years of Bush’s presidency. They knowingly put together budgets that put the country in the hole.

When Democrats took over the House last year, they pledged to pay for any new program by cutting the budget or finding new revenue. The Republican response has been to torpedo any such attempt, which is odd for a party that likes to fashion itself as fiscally conservative.

Republicans seem to be content to pass this off to the next president, which will handicap any efforts to revive the economy, much less to provide basic government services. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, told The Washington Post that the deficit is “going to make it extraordinarily difficult for whoever’s going to become president.”

This isn’t exactly the parting gift that Americans were expecting when George W. Bush, a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative, was elected in 2000. We hope the next president will do much better. It shouldn’t be too hard.