At the cost of a weak defense that ended up biting us in the new millennium. If you recall, the military budget was slashed heavily and there were massive revenues coming in through the dot com bubble that were unrealistic by even the most liberal business model.
To discount the revisionist history going on here, let's look back at a Steve Moore article from the time period to see what was actually going on.
Now for the bad news for GOP partisans. The federal budget has not been balanced by any Republican spending reductions. Uncle Sam now spends $150 billion more than in 1995. Over the past 10 years, the defense budget, adjusted for inflation, has been cut $100 billion, but domestic spending has risen by $300 billion. We have a balanced budget today that is mostly a result of 1) an exceptionally strong economy that is creating gobs of new tax revenues and 2) a shrinking military budget. Social spending is still soaring and now costs more than $1 trillion. Is this the kind of balanced budget that fiscal conservatives want? A budget with no deficit, but that funds the biggest government ever?
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5656
I don't recall any Conservative happy back then because of this "Balenced Budget" because it was a fraud. We all ended up paying for this house of cards in the 2000's.
“At the cost of a weak defense that ended up biting us in the new millennium. If you recall, the military budget was slashed heavily”
You are underestimating the level of domestic cuts that Kasich and Gingrich kept sending up to Clinton. They were significant cuts that were bloody Hill and partisan battles.
Moore’s flaw is that as a pundit, we needed a response to Clinton’s claiming victory in the media for the Balanced Budget.
10 Billion in Defense cuts was actually a victory for Republicans, because the Dems wanted much more.
The increased in defense spending were largely due to Entitlement aging problems that we still face, because back then it was a real Third Rail.
I remember these budget battles clearly. To say that Gingrich doesn’t deserve credit for dragging Clinton into Budget Cuts, is just sticking your head in the sand.
Hell Boehner and gang would have negotiated higher defense spending for higher domestic spending...and that is the point.
Gingrich went in the right direction and when he left, it all fell apart....Gingrich is the person who has the vision and experience to do the touch cutting.