Really? What years were those?
When Newt Gingrich was sworn in as the first Republican Speaker of the House in forty years in January 1995, the Congressional Budget Office projected that over the next decade the cumulative federal budget deficits would total $2.7 trillion. Shortly after Gingrich left office in January 1999, CBO projected that over the next decade that federal surpluses would total over $2.3 trillion- a four-year turnaround in the financial outlook of the United States of $5 trillion. A comparable improvement in the U.S fiscal outlook today would total over $8 trillion (as % of GDP).