Reagan spent a lot of money in the 1980s to build up the military and push the Soviet Union into oblivion. This raised the deficit. In 1991, victory in the first Gulf War showed the overwhelming superiority of American technology and military might. The Soviet Union collapsed in short order, ending the Cold War and leaving the USA the world’s lone super power, and with a secure source of energy in the ME.
Clinton lucked into this and got to spend the “peace dividend” given to him by Reagan and Bush the Elder.
It ain’t rocket science. Libs like to forget what led up to Clinton’s glory years.
Thanks - the “peace dividend” is another factor in how well the economy did under Clinton, but I think the drive to balance the budget was maybe a more important one since it helped limit to some extent what the government spent and thus what was sucked out of the private economy. It seems to me the importance of the peace dividend was that it was in reality a chance for Clinton to divert funding from the military to other branches of government, thus significantly weakening our defenses by the end of his second term. It was in large part because of this that our deficit grew dramatically after 9/11 as Bush tried to restore the military which Clinton had depleted. This is another thing Libs like to forget, as well as the fact that because of his tax cuts Bush had all but eliminated the deficit, which dropped from $500 billion to $100 billion by 2007 when the ‘rats took control of Congress and the bottom fell out of the economy......