Do you remember in the presidential debates George W. Bush and Al Gore arguing over how to spend the projected $2.2 trillion budget surplus?

Even as late as January 2001, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected a $3.5 trillion surplus through 2008, assuming policy was left unchanged and the economy went according to its forecast.

Of course, neither of those things happened. The economy imploded, the tech and housing bubbles burst, 9/11 happened, and the US went to war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Instead of a $3.5 trillion surplus, the federal government had a $5.5 trillion deficit.

Progressives decried the policies and actions of the President, both domestically and internationally. But one of the cries heard the most was that George W. Bush was “presiding over the worst economy since the Great Depression.”

Now, we can look back and put their assertion to the test.

Let’s look at the EPI from just before the Great Depression to just after George W. Bush’s presidency ended:

The EPI scores the US economy at 49.5% at the worst point of the Great Depression vs. 74.5% in 2009—just after George W. Bush left office in January. The average performance of the economy during his term was 90.5%, better than the average performance during the Great Depression.

The honor of presiding over the worst economy since the Great Depression actually belongs to President Obama. Perhaps a better question is this: did President Bush cause the worst economy since the Great Depression?

No, of course not. No one person, even someone with as much power as the President of the United States can cause a depression any more than they can cause an economic boom. However, there are decisions George W. Bush could have made that might have lessened the impact of the eventual—and some might argue, the inevitable: the Great Recession.

With the bursting of the tech bubble, the economy began what many economists say was an overdue correction. When it comes to unemployment during George W. Bush’s term—which rose from 4.7% in 2001 to 9.3% in 2009—there may not have been much he could have done. Likewise, GDP growth fell to -2.8%. Again, with the economic collapse, there’s probably little the executive branch (or any branch) could have done to prevent the market correction.

However, the budget deficit is one place where a US president clearly exerts tremendous influence. While the overall budget must be approved by Congress, it is set by the president.

When George W. and Al Gore were arguing about the projected federal surplus, George W. wanted to give the money back to the taxpayers in the form of rebate checks and tax cuts. During the 2000 campaign, he even warned of the dangers of a budget surplus, claiming that Congress would inevitably spend it (though the Paygo rules explicitly prevent such).

One of President Bush’s problems was relying on the projections of the CBO, which said that the debt-to-GDP ratio would drop from 34% in 2000 to under 10% by 2010. But how often has the CBO been accurate in their projections?

Graphing projected debt-to-GDP vs. what it actually was, we get this interesting chart:

Of course, we assume any projection can be wrong. The real issue is how wrong a forecast usually is. In the case of the CBO’s recent projections, apparently by a lot.

The takeaway here is that the US federal government is consistently optimistic (even overly optimistic) in its economic projections about debt and GDP. Relying on those numbers, in part, led President Bush to pursue policies like tax rebate checks and two rounds of tax cuts—decisions that reduced federal revenue by $1.6 trillion. Slower-than-expected economic growth trimmed the budget by another $1.4 trillion.

On top of lower revenues, the two wars the president led added tremendously to the debt. By the time he left office, the debt-to-GDP ratio was nearly 86% by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) definition.

Can we lay the Great Recession at President Bush’s feet? Of course not. Much of the groundwork for the eventual recession had been laid years or even decades before his presidency. But can we say that his administration’s policies led to a worse recession than the US would have experienced otherwise?

Unequivocally, yes.