If posting a deficit that exceeds military spending isn't "unpatriotic," then what is?

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The glaring failures of Barack Obama that the watchdog media and celebrity culture have hypocritically excused or completely ignored are countless. 

Candidate Obama of 2008, as one example, promised to elevate America's global standing with his "citizen of the world" speeches and Berlin rallies.  Today, however, there's no spot on the globe where America stands stronger and more respected than we did eight years ago.  Even the Russians whom Obama kindly offered "more flexibility" should he win reelection responded by brazenly hacking American systems and interfering in our elections, according to liberals themselves. 

Candidate Obama of 2008, as another example, promised improvement in American racial relations.  Today, however, opinion surveys reveal record levels of pessimism, with 60% stating that racial divisions are actually worse today than when Obama was elected eight years ago. 

Candidate Obama of 2008 also ridiculously promised to heal the planet and halt the oceans' rise.   Today, however, global warming alarmists' doomsday pronouncements have only grown more shrill and apocalyptic than ever. 

But perhaps worst of all is an Obama failure that is subject to easy quantification and objective comparison to his predecessors:  his federal budget deficit record. 

For years throughout the Bush Administration, one couldn't escape incessant media discussion of deficits, and Obama himself labeled Bush "unpatriotic" while campaigning in 2008: 

The problem is, that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents, number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back - $30,000 for every man, woman and child.  That's irresponsible.  It's unpatriotic. 

Bear in mind that when Obama leveled that charge, the most recent budget deficit was merely $161 billion. 

Fast-forward to the present, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its revised estimate of the fiscal 2016 deficit: 

The federal government ran a budget deficit of $588 billion in fiscal year 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimates - $149 billion greater than the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2015.  The 2016 deficit equaled an estimated 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from 2.5 percent of GDP in 2015...  By CBO's estimate, revenues were less than 1 percent higher and outlays were about 5 percent higher in 2016 than they were in the previous fiscal year. 

That last sentence is the bureaucratic way of saying that even though incoming revenues continued to increase, the deficit soared because spending jumped by an even higher 5%. 

Regardless, let's put Obama's latest deficit in perspective. 

The approximately $150 billion increase in this year's deficit is almost as much as the entire $161 billion Bush deficit that Obama considered "unpatriotic." 

Even more alarming, this year's $588 billion deficit exceeds the $564 billion that we spent on national defense.  If posting a deficit that exceeds military spending isn't "unpatriotic," then what is? 

Moreover, we can now fairly compare Bush's complete deficit record to Obama's, and it's not a kind comparison for Obama. 

Over his tenure, Bush presided over a surplus of $127 billion in 2001, then deficits of $158 billion in 2002, $378 billion in 2003, $413 billion in 2004, $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006, $161 billion in 2007 and $459 billion in 2008.  So over Bush's eight years, his total was approximately $2 trillion. 

Obama's record dwarfs Bush's allegedly "unpatriotic" tally.  Under Obama, we saw deficits of $1.413 trillion in 2009, $1.294 trillion in 2010, $1.299 trillion in 2011, $1.1 trillion in 2012, $680 billion in 2013, $492 billion in 2014, $435 billion in 2015 and now $588 billion.  That amounts to an accumulated total of over $7 trillion under Obama. 

So Bush averaged deficits of approximately $250 billion, whereas Obama averaged deficits of approximately $900 billion.  And as the CBO just announced, the situation is only getting worse. 

It all adds up to one of the most dangerous and underreported failures of the Obama years, and there have been many.  Whether attributable to media bias, public disinterest, the political left's ability to spin or some combination thereof, it's a reality that the American electorate had better recognize and address soon.