It is a known fact that Clinton left with a surplus, this is unquestioned. Even articles saying that there is some debate about how large the surplus was admit that he left the country in great economic shape.
The economy was good under Clinton...I never argued it wasn't...so that point is irrelevent.
That said, in terms of the surplus, it is indeed more or less unquestioned, which is sad, because the Treasury figures simply do not back up this claim.
For example:
In
September of 2007, Clinton claimed FY 2000 had a surplus of $230 billion.
Treasury figures for the same year show the the following for our debt:
Beginning FY 2000: 5,656,270,901,633.43
End of FY 2000: 5,678,667,034,082.46
This is an increase in debt of: $22,396,132,449
Maybe you think I am just cherry picking years, so let us take a look at FY 1999 (when Clinton claimed a surplus of $122 billion)
Beginning FY 1999: 5,526,193,008,897.62
End of FY 1999: 5,678,661,795,378.98
This is an increase in debt of: $152,468,786,481
Again, maybe you want to claim I am just making this up...you can access all the
Treasury data here (Straight from Treasury, not some outside source)
You can call it "unquestioned", you can call it whatever you want really, but you need to account for how we had a "surplus" and yet added to the deficit EVERY year in which Clinton was in office.
Again, these are figures directly from the US government, not some outside conspiracy shop...you can discount them if you choose, but at that point, you are the one living in a conspiracy world.
Additionally, consider the following about the CBO assumptions on this issue:
The CBO projected that revenues would average 20.3 percent of GDP throughout the entire decade-even though that level had been reached only three times in the nation's 225-year history.
The CBO projected that spending across the decade would average 16.4 percent of GDP, even though Washington had not held spending that low in any year since 1951.
The CBO projected that discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP would decline by 19 percent (including defense spending declining to 2.4 percent of GDP), and that no new entitlements would be created.
The CBO projections assumed the publicly held debt would be effectively paid off by 2009, and the government would instead begin earning interest on its national surplus-new funds that expanded the budget surplus projections yet further.
You can state some conspiratorial theory but then again you probably think Obama was born in the Congo too.
Please explain how increasing the debt is somehow running a surplus and actually paying down the deficit? The only way to account for this is to have simply borrowed the money out of Social Security...which means you add debt in one area, to make another area look good....but it doesn't actually pay down any debt, as seen by the Treasury figures.
And for the record, on this very board you will find posts made by me stating that the whole "birther" issue is an idiotic waste of time...I am not even sure how that comment even relates to what we are talking about...unless you simply are trying to discount actual data based on a conspiracy theory I never believed in...which is somewhat comical.
