Another George W. Bush legacy: $150 oil

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What's another legacy, in addition to massive income inequality, of President George W. Bush? Try $150-per-barrel oil.

Here's why: Despite rising demand for gasoline, the Bush administration did nothing to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy mandate.

Their policy was to let the market determine which vehicles Americans want to drive. The result? Detroit built gas-guzzling SUVs with little eye on the future, all but guaranteeing a domestic auto manufacturing base unprepared for the next rise in oil and gasoline prices.

That era arrived in 2008, when gasoline bills soared, disposable incomes plunged, and the economy, already stalled by the financial crisis and housing bust, slumped further.

A tax cut that led to debt

The Bush administration's 2001 $1.1 trillion tax cut that favored upper-income groups instantaneously ended the federal government's budget surplus, creating a $250 billion deficit that quickly swelled to $400 billion.

The tax cut, tilted toward Bush's political base of the wealthy, virtually guaranteed that broad-based demand would remain soft, and probably fail, in a few years. It did, and the deficit ballooned - hitting about $1.1 trillion, including bank bailout spending, by the time President Bush left office in January 2009.

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