The public doesn’t care. They simply don’t care.
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on “public assistance.” Cicero - 55 BC
If you take major expenditures off budget and call it “discretionary spending” that doesn’t mean you are running a budget surplus. It just means you are fudging the numbers.
FACT: There has never been a year in recent history where our debt DID NOT increase. So that budget surplus marlarky is just smoke and mirrors. If you are increasing your debt, THERE IS NO SURPLUS.
Then, after a Republican was sworn in as President in Jan. of '01, they dramatically reversed course. The result: the GOP was slaughtered in both the '06 midterms and '08 general. Lesson learned? Doubtful.
It was an oversight they’ve since corrected.
Good finding!
I once told a moderate/liberal person that “that mean Gingrich slashed spending; and Clinton gave us a surplus.” I was repeating liberal talking points in such a way that their absurdity became apparent. It was almost a bluff on my part, because I did not have the facts. Now I do. Thanks!
What I gleaned from the first table is that the Republican Congress gave us a budget surplus from 1998 to 2001. Government revenues and outlays both grew in those years, but revenues were larger than outlays.
It's interesting to note that since 1968 only a Republican Congress has run a budget surplus and that was from 1998 - 2001. In fact, Clinton was running quite a healthy yearly deficit until Newt Gingrich showed up with the 'Contract with America.' In terms of public debt, that increased 5% during Clinton's terms and about 5.1% during Bush's terms.Funny, as I recall, the Contract with America brought about the Pubbie groundswell in the 1994 election, and that congress was sworn in early in 1995.