Originally Posted By: tdtz

I realize that you think that it is non-sense, but you haven't provided any evidence to dispute the evidence. There was no surplus. You can't have surplus if you still have debt. It's as simple as that. And again, using funds that are supposed to be protected, as social security is, to pay down debt, is just playing with a balance sheet and not even really reducing debt.

There is a difference between budget surplus (revenues higher than expenditures in a given fiscal year) vs federal debt (sum of all previous budget deficits). The articles you link to prove my point with text and tables. They show annual budget surpluses, which are as a direct result of Clinton fiscal policy. That's the best federal budget performance in modern history, in stark contrast to Reagan-Bush Sr before him, and Bush Jr. after him. Of course it didn't make a big dent in the much larger federal debt, which accumulated over 200+ years and just quadrupled in the preceding 12 years under Reaganomics. Fact is, Clinton policy resulted in federal budget surpluses and we were heading in a positive direction. If Bush Jr. were fiscally responsible, he would've stayed that course.

It's nonsense to add "intragovernment holdings" just to complicate the picture to deny reality, which is the gist of your articles. The reality is Clinton policy led to greater revenue than expenditures - a net surplus for the last few years of his presidency. He inherit large deficits and his policies turned it around. He is responsible for that positive outcome. By contrast, cutting taxes on the top brackets has never led to a budget surplus. They led to deficit spending, which is stimulative but sometimes necessary, and they transferred a tremendous share of wealth to the wealthiest. It's simple arithmetic.

I admit to being partisan on this issue because I'm a fiscal conservative, the facts are so clear on this matter, and the Republican hypocrisy is disturbing. A Democratic President and Republican Congress should be the best arrangement for dealing with debt, but unfortunately one side seems to think we have arrived at the holy grail of tax policy and nothing can be raised to create a balanced approach to the problem. They even want to cut taxes again, which is ridiculously irresponsible.

Again, what exactly was Clinton supposed to do to stop the market speculation on Wall Street known afterward as the "dotcom bubble" while being impeached for having an affair.