Posted on 05/05/2011 2:01:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
No, not really. A deficit is a deficit of revenue relative to spending. If revenues go down (they did) and spending goes up (it did) then we have a deficit.
Those figures include the SS surplus, which was put into the General Fund. Without these funds, Clinton ran a deficit every year and our national debt grew about 30% under Clinton, who had the benefit of the Peace Dividend (he reduced our military by over a third) and the dot.com bubble. The Rep Congress also forced him to sign welfare reform on the third try.
Libs can't seem to understand that when "the rich" are allowed to keep more of their money, they are less likely to use tax dodges and more likely to create and expand businesses - which creates jobs and increases tax revenues. But if the Congress and President spend money like - well, I'd say drunken sailors, but drunken sailors are honest and only spend their OWN money - no amount of revenue enhancement can hope to keep up.
Agree with the exception that I think most now realize that the SS trust fund is an accounting gimmick. We were paying off privately held treasury bonds at the end of his administration and through 2001.
I think the bulk of the credit goes to the Republican congress. However that credit has a time limit because they started sticking it to us when Bush came into office.
It was both a revenue and a spending crisis. I agree that tax revenues recovered by 2006 but they did not cut spending when they passed the tax cuts. That meant a deficit. Moreover, they kept spending even more after the revenues came in.
I’m all for tax cuts but when we cut taxes, I think we need to cut spending while we wait for the economy to expand. Not before that.
Our Republicans decided to run (what we thought then) was a massive deficit. I think they made a mistake.
Not before that = Not after that.
Yes, using SS "surplus" funding. The national debt has two parts, publicly held and Intragovernmental Holdings. Paying off some of the publicly-held debt using SS surplus is an accounting gimmick. When Clinton took office, the national debt was $4,188,092,107,183.60 and when he left it was $5,727,776,738,304.64.
The Reps had slim majorities in Congess and with the Jeffords defection, it was almost non-existent. And then the Dems took over Congress completely in January 2007.
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