how many of Bush's programs did Obama end? I would place this chart in the suspect category because it make it seem like both Presidencies started at a zero or equal plateau, when neither clearly did. Clearly the chart shows an average. President Bush has the advantage of having 1 year without any war. Than other year without the war in Iraq. Those two major spending obligation have been in Obama's average since day 1. I would also note going back to my original point, Obama stepped into office and was not able to start at the same level of spending as Bush due to those wars. Obviously wars go beyond election cycles, so of course his average will be higher than Bush's for that simple fact.
Your first sentence there is the key point: Obama, despite being the first US President in decades to simultaneously have a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate, ended none of Bush's programs (or at least none that I can recall). This despite the fact that the Democrats were in complete control of US government as of January 2009 and could have rammed through repeals of every single Bush-era program. Yet while possessed of the ability to do whatever they liked what they chose was to retain everything Bush had signed. Thus they, and Obama, now own all of it and all of the associated spending & costs.
Nice try on the wars but even including the cost of them defense spending is still well below its post WW II average in real terms:
Both Bush I and Clinton slashed defense to further gorge the welfare state beast. Bush II would've done the same but the first major attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor forced him to do otherwise.
As a matter of fact, we could eliminate the entire Department of Defense, not just spending for present foreign wars but the ENTIRE DOD ...
... and Obama would still run roughly a $1,000,000,000,000.00 deficit in 2011 alone:
There is very clearly a spending problem but it has little to do with Bush, our present foreign wars and/or the DOD.