In the wake of the debt ceiling deal they opposed, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are predictably apoplectic that Vice President Joe Biden allegedly likened Tea Partiers to "terrorists." In that case, they must really be furious with observers like New York Times reporter Joe Nocera and George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill who really did call the Tea Party's debt ceiling hostage takers terrorists. But while O'Neill certainly had good reason for proclaiming "the people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists," Casey Anthony offers another fitting analogy. After all, it appears that the same party that killed the American balance sheet is getting away with the murder.
In the wake of Monday's House vote to pay the $2.1 trillion ransom for averting a U.S. default and national economic suicide, Speaker John Boehner crowed, "I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy." No doubt, Boehner must be overjoyed at the public's disgust with Washington and growing distrust of the government. After all, Democrats actually want the government to do something for the American people whereas "the chief consequence of the conservatives' unrelenting faith in the badness of government," as Thomas Franks wrote three years ago in The Wrecking Crew, "is bad government." And Boehner's Republicans ought to be thrilled that at a time of historically low federal taxes and record high income inequality, the debt reduction package did not require one penny of new revenue from America's wealthiest people and most profitable corporations while leaving America's social safety net in tatters.
But the biggest coup in the GOP debt caper is pinning the crime on someone else. While deflecting attention to President Obama's mythical "spending binge," it was the Mack the Knife Republicans that spread the scarlet billows from the United States Treasury.
Of course, you'd never know Republicans were largely responsible for America's fiscal bloodletting by listening to John Boehner. In his nationally-televised address last week, Boehner announced:

"In Washington more spending and more debt is business as usual. I've got news for Washington - those days are over."

The days, Boehner should have explained, before Barack Obama took the oath of office.
In case Americans had forgotten that Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it, the New York Times presented this helpful reminder:

For their part, Republicans want to pretend history began on January 20, 2009. While Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling claimed Friday that for Republicans raising the debt ceiling is "contrary to our DNA," House Minority Leader Eric Cantor protested two weeks ago, "I don't think the White House understands is how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they're going to vote for a debt ceiling increase."
As McClatchy showed, Republicans are as bad at genetics and history as they are at economics:

Leave aside for the moment that small government icon Ronald Reagan signed 17 debt ceiling increases into law. (That might explain why the Gipper repeatedly demanded Congress boost his borrowing authority and called the oceans of red ink he bequeathed to America his greatest regret.) As it turns out, Republican majorities voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling under President Bush and the current GOP leadership team voted a combined 19 times to bump the debt limit $4 trillion during his tenure. (That vote tally included a "clean" debt ceiling increase in 2004, backed by 98 current House Republicans and 31 sitting GOP Senators.)
Of course, they had to. After all, the two unfunded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget-busting Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 (the first war-time tax cut in modern U.S. history) and the Medicare prescription drug program drained the U.S. Treasury. Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor voted for all of it.
Again, in words and pictures, the New York Times tells the tale:

As the Washington Post summed up the CBO's conclusions regarding the causes of the nation's mounting debt earlier this year, "The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts." The analysis by the Times echoed that finding:

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here -- from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

But as Ezra Klein explained in the Washington Post, the revealing Times chart doesn't tell the full story of the impact of Bush-era policies on future debt facing Barack Obama:

What's also important, but not evident, on this chart is that Obama's major expenses were temporary -- the stimulus is over now -- while Bush's were, effectively, recurring. The Bush tax cuts didn't just lower revenue for 10 years. It's clear now that they lowered it indefinitely, which means this chart is understating their true cost. Similarly, the Medicare drug benefit is costing money on perpetuity, not just for two or three years. And Boehner, Ryan and others voted for these laws and, in some cases, helped to craft and pass them.

These two graphs from the Washington Post and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities make that point crystal clear. Analyses by CBPP showed that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure, and if made permanent, over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP and the stimulus - combined.

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch was telling the truth when he described Republican fiscal mismanagement during the Bush years by acknowledging, "It was standard practice not to pay for things."
Despite Hatch's confession, the Republicans seemingly caught red-handed with the red ink appear to have gotten off scot-free.
If that sounds like Casey Anthony, it should. The Republicans, too, lied to the American people but nevertheless were not convicted in the court of public opinion. But unlike "Tot Mom," the GOP had done this before. After all, the debt kamikazes and default deniers who threatened what John Boehner himself deemed a "financial disaster" were prepared to "shut it down" to extort government budget cuts this spring. (And by all indications, that drama will be repeated this fall, as the nation's gasoline taxes come due for reauthorization.) Regardless, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear that the Republicans suicide budget assassins would strike again:

"It set the template for the future. In the future, Neil, no president -- in the near future, maybe in the distant future -- is going to be able to get the debt ceiling increased without a re-ignition of the same discussion of how do we cut spending and get America headed in the right direction. I expect the next president, whoever that is, is going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again in 2013, so we'll be doing it all over."

All that's left is to sell the movie rights.