Another graduate of the matchbook-cover Jayson Blair School of Journalism.
There were, of course, no budget surpluses during the Clinton years. The national debt went up every single year.
The New York Times is simply reporting the "unified deficit" that BOTH parties have long referred to when talking about the deficit. It is true that the Gross Federal Debt (the debt that is currently about $8.3 trillion) went up every year under Clinton. In fact, it has gone up in every year since 1970. The problem with the "unified deficit" is that it does not include the monies that the government is borrowing from Social Security and the other trust funds. However, if the claim that we ran a surplus from 1998 to 2001 is a lie, so is the claim that we are on target to cut the deficit in half. Following is that claim from the White House web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/budget/2007/index.html:
[The Budget] projects the deficit will decline from its projected 2004 peak of 4.5 percent of GDP ($521 billion) down to 1.4 percent ($208 billion) in 2009, more than in half and well below the 40-year historical average deficit of 2.3 percent.
To evaluate this claim, following are the figures from the most recent budget:
RECEIPTS, OUTLAYS, AND SURPLUSES OR DEFICITS(-): 1990-2011
(billions of dollars)
Public
Total Total Unified Public Def w/o Gross OASDI Medicare
Year Receipts Outlays Deficit Deficit OASDI Deficit Surplus Surplus GDP
---- -------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
1990 1032.1 1253.1 -221.0 -220.8 -279.1 -338.5 58.2 15.5 5735.4
1991 1055.1 1324.3 -269.2 -277.4 -331.0 -391.9 53.5 15.4 5935.1
1992 1091.3 1381.6 -290.3 -310.7 -361.5 -403.6 50.7 13.6 6239.9
1993 1154.5 1409.5 -255.1 -248.7 -295.4 -349.3 46.8 10.2 6575.5
1994 1258.7 1461.9 -203.2 -184.7 -241.4 -292.3 56.8 1.1 6961.3
1995 1351.9 1515.9 -164.0 -171.3 -231.8 -277.3 60.4 -7.1 7325.8
1996 1453.2 1560.6 -107.4 -129.7 -196.1 -260.9 66.4 8.9 7694.1
1997 1579.4 1601.3 -21.9 -38.3 -119.6 -187.7 81.3 -1.1 8182.4
1998 1722.0 1652.7 69.3 51.2 -48.2 -109.0 99.4 6.6 8627.9
1999 1827.6 1702.0 125.6 88.7 -36.0 -127.3 124.7 26.3 9125.3
2000 2025.5 1789.2 236.2 222.6 70.7 -23.2 151.8 29.9 9709.8
2001 1991.4 1863.2 128.2 90.2 -72.8 -141.2 163.0 25.2 10057.9
2002 1853.4 2011.2 -157.8 -220.8 -379.9 -428.5 159.1 28.6 10377.4
2003 1782.5 2160.1 -377.6 -373.0 -528.7 -561.6 155.7 8.1 10805.5
2004 1880.3 2293.0 -412.7 -382.1 -533.0 -594.7 150.9 6.1 11546.0
2005 2153.9 2472.2 -318.3 -296.7 -470.2 -550.6 173.5 14.1 12290.4
2006* 2285.5 2708.7 -423.2 -426.7 -607.1 -706.2 180.4 -5.1 13030.2
2007* 2415.9 2770.1 -354.2 -372.6 -565.2 -684.0 192.6 -31.4 13760.9
2008* 2590.3 2813.6 -223.3 -241.9 -454.7 -569.9 212.8 -27.0 14520.6
2009* 2714.2 2921.8 -207.6 -226.0 -455.9 -571.6 229.8 -32.4 15295.8
2010* 2878.2 3060.9 -182.7 -201.4 -426.1 -545.7 224.7 -40.0 16101.9
2011* 3034.9 3239.8 -204.9 -225.1 -436.2 -554.0 211.2 -58.7 16955.0
*estimated
Source: Budget of the United States Government, FY 2007: Historical Tables 1.1 and 7.1
As can be seen, the actual unified deficit was $413 billion in 2004 (the $521 billion figure was just a prior projection of the deficit) and is projected to be about $208 billion in 2009. That is just about a halving of the deficit in dollar terms. However, the gross federal debt increased $595 billion in 2004 and is projected to increase by $572 billion in 2009. That is a drop of less than 4 percent and both numbers are well over half a trillion dollars! All this is just in time for the Boomer retirement.
The following graph gives a visual display of various measures of the deficit:
The gray line is the unified deficit that both parties refer to and the red line is the change in the gross federal debt that you are referring to. The actual numbers and sources for the above table and graph are at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/def07.html.