In his Playbook today, Politico's Mike Allen tells me “IF YOU READ ONLY ONE STORY,” make sure it's David Leonhardt's “Economic Scene” column, which lays out the “basic truth” that “President Obama's agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying.” An excellent recommendation, to be sure:

IF YOU READ ONLY ONE STORY - David Leonhardt's “Economic Scene” column, col. 5 at top of N.Y. Times A1, “Sea of Red Ink: How It Spread from a Puddle - Bush, Obama and a Long-Gone Surplus”: “There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years. The first is that President Obama's agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested. The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country's choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it. ... The story of today's deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years. You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush's policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.”

But when will the Politico grasp this same “basic truth”? A Politico article published yesterday - with the headline "GOP: Debt will bring Obama down" - was entirely devoted to quoting those claims by “Republican critics,” yet simply presented the issue as a he-said, she-said:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told POLITICO that GOP candidates in 2010 will almost certainly use the deficit to argue that Democrats own a Washington mess.

“This was not an inherited situation. This was a matter entirely of this administration's and this Democratic leadership's making,” Cornyn said. “In large part, I believe, 2010 will be a referendum on their performance.”

When President George W. Bush left office, he left behind a $10.6 trillion national debt, which refers to the cumulative amount of money the government owes. That number now stands at $11.4 trillion, according to the Treasury Department.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the annual deficit will grow to $984 billion for the first eight months of the current fiscal year, compared with a $319 billion shortfall for the same time period last year. In 2012, under Obama's budget, the CBO estimates that the deficit will fall to $658 billion.

Democrats argue that Bush left them with an economic mess and two wars, and they say that the country needs to spend money to get its way out of financial calamity. Eventually, they say, the government will see increased tax revenues as the economy improves, and it will be repaid by the banks and auto companies that have secured massive loans to stay afloat.

(As Eric noted earlier, the Politico is certainly racking up the numbers this week when it comes to regurgitating GOP talking points.)