“If revenue exceeded spending, why did the debt increase?”
Some don’t count the payment of interest on the national debt when saying a budget is “balanced”. So, if your annual budget has a projected revenue of $3.2T and a projected expenditure of $3T, it would be balanced (no annual budget deficit) and actually show a “surplus” of $200B. Then, although the national debt was not increased by those annual expenditures it still went up by $200B when, say $400B in interest payments were added on.
Of course, most of us in the real world understand that the interest payments are indeed expenditures (or at least obligations) and should be considered when attempting to say you’re going to “balance” the budget.
Newt would possibly be correct if he said “Not counting interest payments on the national debt, I helped pass 4 consecutive annual budgets that spent less than was taken in”. Or some such thing.
Wish I could do that.
"Not counting the interest on my mortgage, I'm rich!"