None of them are real fiscal conservatives. I do not expect national debt to be reduced by any of them. Only the rate of growth may improve over president Zero. Even president Reagan’s spending tripled in 8 years. Newt’s claim of having balanced budgets for 4 years is a lie since he includes funds raided from social security account into general budget. And Paul is unelectable and weird on foreign policy & drugs. Basically we are screwed. Just a matter of degree.
[Newt’s claim of having balanced budgets for 4 years is a lie since he includes funds raided from social security account into general budget.]
Not exactly. I remember quite well those years. There was a budget surplus. The amount of the surplus IIRC was just a little more than the social security excess. Hence the budget was “balanced”.
Clinton campaigned on the best way to spend the surplus, and after the about the first week, no one even acknowledged that the surplus was a lie.
During that time the excess of social security coming in over the amount sent out was invested in special issue Treasuries. Once the Treasuries were purchased this excess raised the amount of the national debt.
So the more money there was coming in for social security, the more the national debt went up. Also during that time, every time there was some money available to apply to the debt, the Democrats in congress would have all sorts of suggestions about expenditures.
Greenspan kept telling them the money needed to be applied to pay down the debt.