[Lonesome in Massachussets]

We actually ran a budget surplus during the mid nineties, in part due to the "peace dividend", including severe cuts in military spending and in part due to increased tax revenues during the dot-com bubble.

0bama is proposing unprecedented levels of peace time deficit spending that will make us poorer in the future. I am calling this peace time, economcally at least, because we are spending about 1% of our GDP on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. In 1943, we spent about 45% of GDP on the War (more than Germany, another belligerent.) Even with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq military spending as a percent of GDP is lower than it was during the Carter Misadministration.

[DoughtyOne]

Thank you. I agree with your comments. I do want to mention that my overall thoughts were not on the year to year, but on the fact that we had/have trillions in debt, even if we do run budget surpluses in the short term.

That’s one thing that used to bother me a lot during the Clinton years, when the left would infer that Clinton had eliminated the nation’s debt. Like hell he had.

When Bush ran budget deficits, the left would say that Clinton had eliminated the debt, but Bush had put us back in debt again.

I know that isn’t where you were headed, so don’t think I mis-interpreted your information.