Martin O’Malley: We Have a Debt Because George W. Bush Led Us into Iraq

“The reason we have a debt is because George W. Bush led us into war,” Democratic presidential candidate Gov. Martin O’Malley told Rachel Maddow at a candidate forum in South Carolina Friday.

That’s why we have a debt,” O’Malley added on the subject.

Though the Bush administration spent more than $800 billion on the Iraq War—by generous estimates—the federal debt is $18.513658 trillion as of this writing.

Taken at face value, President Bush’s Iraq spending accounts for more than 4.3 percent of the total debt, but a substantive degree has already been paid back in taxes by government contractors.