When you say "no coincidence", I understand you're inferring that a causal relationship exists and is confirmed by a statistical correlation.
Actually, I was just quoting the editorial by Senators Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).
Given the fact that PAYGO's start in 1990 preceded an even bigger surge in public debt, I can see why PAYGO is favored by the big government tax raising crowd.
There's a couple of problems with your statement. First of all, PAYGO started in 1991 as stated in this document on the White House web site. Secondly, the best indicator of success to look at is the deficit, not the debt. The following graph shows various measures of the deficit since 1970:
The actual numbers and sources can be found at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/def06.html. As can be seen, the gross deficit had reached a maximum of 6.6% of GDP in 1991, the year that PAYGO went into effect. The gross deficit then decreased steadily reaching a low of 0.2% of GDP in 2000 and moving up to 1.4% of GDP in 2001. Then PAYGO expired in 2002 and the gross deficit jumped up to 4.1% of GDP and has been above 5% of GDP since 2003.
Just as it would be unreasonable to expect Bush to balance the budget in one year, so would it be unreasonable to expect PAYGO to do so. Because of the relationship between the deficit and debt described in post #197, the gross debt continued to increase until the deficit was brought below a certain level. Assuming a GDP growth rate of 5.5%, a gross deficit of 3.3% of GDP would cause the gross debt to trend toward 60% of GDP. The gross deficit decreased from 3.4 to 2.3% of GDP in 1997 and it was that year that the gross deficit began to decline.