First, because I'm bored, I'll slip on my "I believe in Party differences and love talk radio" shirt in order to entertain your post by throwing out common rebutles to this surplus claim you love.
1) The president/executive branch can't technically spend or save money, congress does. All money bills originate in the house. The years prior to 1999 Clinton ran a deficit. It wasn't until the "contract with america" by a Republican congress in 1994/1995 that the deficit started to decrease and lead to a surplus in 1999/2000. Clinton did very little, but he also changed the way Roth IRA's work to give an immediate tax revenue that would otherwise be generated over 20-40 years - essentially stealing taxes from future administrations.
2) The dot.com bubble of the 90's poured huge amounts of money into the treasury. About the time it burst, Clinton's biggest concern was which intern his cock was in. Economic lag caused most of it's effects years later.
3) During and because of the economic surplus you dance about, Congress increased it's average spending about 600% in seven years, spending extraordinary amounts of money. When the surplus ended (see above), the spending continued to increase. Meanwhile, everyone in both parties point at every person they can think of to blame. Welcome to today.
4) Clinton helped pass the largest tax increase in our countries history to that point, which would help any treasury, wouldn't it? (didn't he even retroactively raise taxes on the dead?)
5) Bush inherited a spending problem and a handbrake on the economy commonly called 9-11. Not to mention (arguably justifiably) refunding the military which had been dramatically defunded in the previous 10 years. That's how Bush "squandered" the so-called surplus.
6) In reality, it was a projected surplus, not an actual surplus. Mostly by projecting a continual cut in each years defense budget. But even pretending it was a real surplus, having a massive surplus is nearly as bad, if not as bad, as a deficit because you are keeping all that money out of the economy. Most economists would agree that a national budget should ideally be kept break even, if not slightly in deficit (to help bonds).
7) It's important to remember the national debt never went down in the 90's. If you start saving up your paychecks and ignoring your bills, you aren't exactly doing better than the guy with no money trying to pay off his bills, are you? The national debt under Clinton was 6-7 trillion dollars. How is that a surplus? (Of course, Bush is no better, if not worse).
8) Early in the Clinton term, the Treasury reshuffled the government’s bond portfolio from longer term to shorter term bonds. This accounting "trick", invisible to the public, lowered the overall federal outlay scheduling and won the White House some propaganda points for “lowering” the deficit. Points still being thrown out today.
- Now I remove that shirt and replace it with my "Reality" shirt:
Ultimately - Until the Federal Reserve is abolished, none of this really matters either way. The problems they cause is far worse than the national budget.
Actually believing that the two different parties A) Really has control over, influence, and and does effect the economy much differently than each other and B) Have truly different attainable goals, makes it nearly impossible to discuss this much.
At the risk ofl being accused of being level1online's boyfriend/bumbuddy/clone/second account -
Playing "Republican bad, Democrat good" games like you tend to, will only have one certain effect: fulfilling the goals of those really in control by staying distracted and buying the illusion of party difference, which in turn makes us both ultimately about as effective in real change as hamsters on hamster wheels.
