What about the deficit?

With all the political focus presently on the national debt, what about the deficit?  Teresa Tritch over at the New York Times investigates this question (see here).  She says:

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.

Her articles includes some informative data and graphs.