It appears to me that the dent is really small (especially in log scale). What's all the fuss really about? Seems just that politicians are making a big issue out of this and using it as a rationalization to make cuts that they already wanted to do anyway.
I found this graph: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Real+Gross+Domestic+Pro... (Switch it to logscale.) The most obvious thing I notice about it is the totally flat result after 2000, then improvement (but not as fast as before), and now back where we started.