The increase in debt under Obama was caused by dealing with the total mess that Bush and his Republican enablers created. To try to bring the Republicans along with the recovery plan Obama had to add tax cuts for the wealthy, a complete waste of resources in a recession. When an economy is stalling because of debt and lack of demand, all that tax cuts do is pay off some debt or reward the rich for creating the mess. The debt would have been much smaller had the government spent that money on programs to help the poor.