Look, don't get yourself too worked up about deficits and the national debt. Remember when Bush was president? Nobody cared about deficits. In fact, Cheney famously said that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." It only became an issue when a Democratic president was elected, eager to pursue a Democratic agenda. The day Obama was elected the debt became an urgent national crisis and we suddenly had no money to spend. The day Obama leaves office and is replaced by a Republican, from that day forward you'll never hear another word about deficits or the debt. The Republicans will continue to do the only thing they're good at: running up the national debt. $20 trillion, $40 trillion, $80 trillion... it will keep going higher and higher and nobody except an occasional economist crank will mention it again. The debt "crisis" is a tool to prevent Democrats from advancing their agenda, nothing more. At least we hope so, because we know the Republicans won't care about it once they're in power again.
Of course, once they control government again, that priority will be moot, and they can once again focus on running up huge deficits giving tax breaks to the super-wealthy. Democrats tax and spend, Republicans borrow and spend. Democrats take your money and give it to poor people, Republicans take your children's money and give it to rich people. Those are pretty much your choices, although Republicans, increasingly emboldened by what they can get away with, are starting to talk about taxing poor people ("the 50% who don't pay taxes") to accelerate the great transfer of wealth to the wealthy. So the Republicans appear to want your money as well as your children's money. Oh well, apparently it all makes perfect sense to the American people.
I do have to say that GWB's bailout of the auto industry was very smart, and Obama's handling of the GM bankruptcy was also. Those companies are profiting, hiring, and paying the government back. It's not hard to find a job if you are an engineer in MI. I have an uncle that owns a supplier. His primary customer was GM. He would have had to lay off everyone if it weren't for the auto bailout. Of course, you can criticize GM for getting into that position, but at least there were significant structural and contractual (labor made real concessions) changes made as a part of the auto bailout, -unlike the banking bailout.