Check the half century history of government spending versus income.

Source: Science magazine

This is the best visual I have seen of the source of the federal deficit. Federal spending and revenue were pretty much in balance until 1968. The Nixon/Ford administrations began to grow the deficit, and the Carter administration began to bring spending down and income up. Then along came the Reagan/Bush I administrations which ran with spending much higher than income for a decade. The Clinton administration managed to begin reducing the federal debt with years of increasing revenue and decreasing government expenditures as portions of GDP. Bush II tax cuts quickly decreased government income while expenditures increased slowly, leading to further increases in the debt. Finally, the unregulated financial industries got into trouble and the housing bubble burst, leading to a financial crisis that required huge government stimulus while the economy contracted leading to a major increase in the deficit and the debt.

Looking at the paragraph, it clearly has been the Republicans that have created the debt and the Democrats who were more fiscally responsible over the last half century.

It should also be clear that the debt grew over decades, with many years in which the government budget could have been balanced with little risk to the economy. I don't suppose that still facing a weak economy we should expect to quickly eliminate the debt, although we might within a few years bring taxes and spending more into balance.