You've by now seen this graph and variations of it at least a few dozen times, but it is always worth repeating. Because it eventually starts to sink in.
For evidence of that, consider this article from Businessweek, pointing out Republican hypocrisy on the debt they helped create.
July 26 (Bloomberg) -- House Speaker John Boehner often attacks the spendthrift ways of Washington.
“In Washington, more spending and more debt is business as usual,” the Republican leader from Ohio said in a televised address yesterday amid debate over the U.S. debt. “I’ve got news for Washington - those days are over.”
Yet the speaker, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell all voted for major drivers of the nation’s debt during the past decade: Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and Medicare prescription drug benefits. They also voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, that rescued financial institutions and the auto industry.
Together, a Bloomberg News analysis shows, these initiatives added $3.4 trillion to the nation’s accumulated debt and to its current annual budget deficit of $1.5 trillion.
Republicans, of course, have an answer: "'Blaming Bush for the structural deficits we've known would come since the early 1990s is beyond irresponsible.' said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Cantor." Right, except that the mid to late 90s saw unprecedented growth and a budget surplus. That's another one of those liberally-biased facts you can't expect a Republican to acknowledge.
Unfortunately, what you can't sum up in an easy-to-understand chart is the fact that Republicans don't care about the deficit. It's purely a political issue for them, a cudgel to keep that "tax and spend" mantra against Democrats going. All they really care about is making their friends richer and making the poor suffer.