OK, if the budget surplus was not applied to reducing debt as you are saying, where did it go? I am assuming the only other place it went was spent somehow. If true how can they claim a budget surplus when it was not used to reduce debt?
The FERAL GUBMINT extorts about three trillion a year, all it has to do is spend less in the same fiscal year to claim a surplus.
If they spend the surplus on anything other than paying down the National Debt in the next fiscal year, the National debt will continue to grow.
Unfortunately, under the communists now in power, it is spending 4 trillion a year.